seoul searching

home sweet home

2010-06-14T15:49:00.002+09:00

though my lack of updating might lead you to think otherwise, we have arrived safely back in canada, and have slowly been making the transition back to north american living. we've actually just come up on our one month "anniversary" of being home, and while initially it was a bit of reverse culture shock, mark and i have had an awesome welcome home, and have happily unpacked our bags and settled into life in the western hemisphere.

it has been so good to reunite with friends and family, and i am excited to get life in canada started again. having our experience abroad come to an end has been simultaneously overwhelming, exciting, and bittersweet - but, being back weirdly feels like we've never left (with a year + missing from our memories). at first, it was a bizarre feeling, but so far we're doing a good job of adjusting.

our travels already feel like a lifetime ago, and our korea experience feels even longer. i've been busy job searching, while mark has landed himself a temporary full-time role. we'll soon be back into the swing of things ... but we'll never forget the memories we've made and the experiences we've had. thank you to all who kept up with us along the way - i'm so glad to have been able to share our adventures with you!

one night (or three) in bangkok

2010-05-11T23:53:00.005+09:00

goodbye islands, hello city.

we've arrived in bangkok after nearly two weeks in the paradise of the islands in the south. the majority of our time was spent on ko tao, and the best part was our 5-day visit to remote ao tanot (or, tanote bay). we had a beachside bungalow with an ocean view on an isolated strip of sand. i spent my birthday snorkeling in the shallow reefs - where we saw multiple black tip sharks! - and getting an afternoon massage on the beach. absolutely. wonderful.

and now we've arrived in bangkok, after a long but easy journey via boat, then bus. with all the media coverage of the ongoing political unrest here, we'd keeping an eye on the news reports and seeking advice from other travelers we met in the south who had just come from here. and the verdict was that everything in bangkok was ... business as usual. the protests seem to be settled, and then quickly unsettled. however, in the backpacker area of th khao san, everything is its crazy and boisterous self. the reputation of this small but infamous location does not fail to disappoint.

we will be keeping safe and lapping up our last days until we're set to fly home via tokyo on friday. can't wait!

see you soon (for real this time)
xoxo

the beach

2010-05-01T18:04:00.004+09:00

this will have to be quick, as the internet is pricey, and i've been dawdling on facebook and email already ...

we are in the south of thailand, on ko pha-ngan to be more specific. we arrived at this island yesterday, after three wonderful days on the magnificent ko samui to the south. our lonely planet describes the three islands we'll be visiting during our travels as kind of "sisters", which i quite enjoy, being from a family of three girls. and the analogy works quite well.

to give you an idea: samui is the biggest sister, and the most developed. it has a lot of resorts, and many of the beachside backpacker bungalows are unfortunately being swallowed up by the big luxurious pricey guys. we managed to find one of the remaining cheap backpacker digs, on the island's popular chaweng beach. we were north of the raucous parties and main strip, which was fine by us, as our resort had one of the nicest views of the ocean. the water was so shallow you could walk out for almost a kilometer and still be only ankle deep, and the temperature was like a bathtub. it was amazing.

next, ko pha-ngan. home to the much-talked-about full moon party (also known as, monthly all-night beach rave), and the aforementioned middle kid. former home to hippie backpackers, it's now apparently growing more resort-y and samui-like. and although we'd heard good things and bad things about the legendary lunar bash, mark and i decided to opt out. in my defense, i don't need to be smushed like a sardine in a crowd of fluorescent-body-painted acid-tripping strangers dancing to house beats all night to feel like our thailand experience has been fulfulling ... (ha! just saying ...) instead, we stayed on samui until the full-moon had passed (and the prices on pha-ngan had lowered).

we'll be here for two more days, and then we are off to ko tao, the baby of the island family. ko tao is the smallest, but it is known for some of the best scuba diving in the world. mark's licensed, so he's looking forward to exploring the ocean depths. i, on the other hand, am both too cheap and too lazy to get certified, and will spend my time beach-lounging and finishing the beach. because, yes, i am very cliched and reading alex garland's cult classic ... while here on the beach.

cam-bo-oh-oh-dia

2010-04-23T20:46:00.005+09:00

oh, hello cambodia.

so, for the past 5 days, we have been exploring thailand's neighbour to the east, and basking in her glorious heat. no, seriously, it is REALLY hot here. and maybe it feels hotter because we're no longer soaked by songkran, and instead with our own sweat ... but 42°C and sunny is the hottest place i've been in my life.

not that i'm complaining, of course :)

we spent our first three cambodian days in the country's capital, phnom penh. phnom penh is a bustling city, with a million motor bikes. there's more to it, but that's the best way to describe it. our hostel was a short jaunt away from the tonle sap river, and about 15 minute walk to the touristy riverside strip. we spent our first day with a sombre visit to the killing fields and genocide museum, and got thorough insight into cambodia's all too recent terrible and violent history.

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as an aside ...

it's reassuring to see that this country is taking steps to move forward from its past, but it's heartbreaking to watch how slowly these changes are unfolding. there is serious poverty here; many women and children are begging in the street. and while tourism is contributing a lot to cambodia's economy and prosperous future - it's clearly not enough. and doesn't do much to make me feel like less of a privileged westerner on a fancy vacation while children are asking for food from my patio lunch. even if we give in to each request, a dollar or two doesn't give these children an education or a proper meal. it's heartbreaking.

please check these out:

http://www.childrenofcambodia.com/help.php

http://www.helpthecambodianchildren.org/

http://www.sharingfoundation.org/

http://www.shcccambodia.org/

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we left phnom penh on wednesday and took a 6 hour bus ride north to siem reap, where we are now. siem reap is the home to the temples of angkor, which was #1 on my must-do list when planning our trip to southeast asia. we've bought a 3-day pass to visit the sites, and have already spent our first day exploring. truly breathtaking and amazing and awe-inspiring. and HOT. i'm pretty sure i sweat all of my sunscreen off, and consequently burned one shoulder. and there's two more days to come ...

chiang mai, the adventures continue

2010-04-18T19:58:00.005+09:00

after spending thursday totally soaked in the songkran festivities, we'd signed up for a day-long trek for friday. chiang mai is very popular for "jungle trekking" - usually tour packages of various lengths that give you the opportunity to ride elephants, white water raft, hike in the jungle, and visit an indigenous hill tribe. we decided to forgo the overnight/multi-day trek in favour of our own (guest house) beds, but still found we were able to pack a lot of adventuring into a 9-hour day.

we were picked up in the morning by a songthaew, or a red covered pickup truck with bench seating in the back - chiang mai's ubiquitous taxi. after a quick stop at a butterfly farm, we were off to experience the elephants. i was way more nervous than i expected: needless to say, elephants are huge animals. and while we purchased a small bunch of bananas to feed him (/control him?), we are more or less at his mercy. and at one point, our guy wandered off the designated path and tore down a small tree to eat mid-ride. it wasn't until the guide's belated "yah!" yells (elephant-speak for "get the eff back on the path") that he returned to where he was supposed to be. meanwhile, i was freaking out and clinging with sweaty palms to the railings on the seat! nevertheless, we obviously survived and it was an amazing experience.

after the elephants, we trekked through the jungle to a small waterfall where we swam and ate lunch - pad thai wrapped in a banana leaf, mmm delicious. then in the afternoon, we went "white water rafting", which wasn't even, since it's april and the hottest season in thailand, and the river was too low for any white water, let alone rafting. unfortunately, we spent about an hour and half cruising down river and getting stuck on rocks, much to the delight of the hundreds of local thais bathing and relaxing in the river. they didn't hesitate to splash us with some belated songkran celebratory water as we continuously beached our raft on the rocks! oh, lovely.

although the white water rafting was a bit of a failure, our trek also included bamboo rafting which was much more suitable and leisurely for the river's level. we also got to visit with the long neck karen tribe, in their village. our time at the tribal village was brief, but we did get the opportunity for pictures and purchasing some of their handicrafts.

in the evening, despite our total exhaustion (and multitude of bug bites) from the day, we wrangled energy to go see a muay thai fight. totally awesome. not only did we get to see a girl fight and a midget vs a kid fight (among others; and the midget defeated the kid, if you're curious), but the headlining fight was a thai vs a canadian. and the canadian won! we consumed many chang beers and had an excellent time.

yesterday we visited tiger kingdom, which is a tiger sanctuary just outside of chiang mai. here you can visit tigers, and pet them. it was like the cat café, but so much better! i'm not 100% convinced these animals aren't drugged, as one trainer told us they sleep for 20 hours a day ... errmm really?? but they are treated properly, so that counts for something. my favourites were definitely the baby tigers - 8 weeks old! they cuddled in our lap, and i didn't want to leave.

but, speaking of leaving, our time in chiang mai is coming to a close. tomorrow, we're catching a flight to phnom penh, cambodia for a change of scenery. i apologize for the absence of our own pictures, accompanied by the tedious length of this post! we haven't had the opportunity to upload any of our pics yet, so you'll just have to enjoy my stolen internet illustrations.

xoxo

sawatdee-ka!

2010-04-15T20:15:00.004+09:00

we have made it to thailand! i am going to try and keep up the blog while we're over here, hopefully i can wrangle the motivation to keep up while adventuring/vacationing. although we're no longer "seoul searching" we are still mark and alex in asia, so there!

mark and i are currently in chiang mai, thailand, which is in the north of the country. we arrived last night, around 10pm, totally zonked from a day of travel (and three consecutive flights). our last minute itinerary change ended up being a lucky rescheduling for us, as we arrived in the middle of thai new year, or songkran, which is heavily celebrated in chiang mai. the whole city comes out for a massive WATER FIGHT, complete with water guns and buckets to soak people. mark and i spent the day getting absolutely drenched (our guest house lent us some guns) - it was so amazing!! thai people are so friendly and happy, and very eager to soak two pale farang (foreigners). we had stupidly brought along our money belts + passports, thinking they'd stay dry ... they didn't. my passport spent several hours drying out, and is now pressed under a heavy book for de-wrinkling. i hope they let me out of the country (eventually, of course) as the date on my "admitted" stamp has now been washed away.

we plan to spend at least 5 days in chiang mai. our guest house is lovely, and we have air conditioning (thank god! it was 35°C when we arrived here, at night. hello heat.), free internet and there's a pool, which we soaked up the sun beside this afternoon. tomorrow we're booked to go for a jungle trek - we will spend the day hiking and visiting a hill tribe, as well as going for an elephant ride! i am super pumped.

we're having a wonderful time. we're off now to find some dinner and explore the night market and hopefully not get soaked.

to those in korea: we miss you! we're sorry you have to work/deal with unusual spring cold weather right now

to those in canada: see you in less than a month!

*not my pic - non-waterproof cameras could not survive such wet carnage. but check out that woman getting pummeled in the face! that was me x493022 today.

goodbye korea T_T

2010-04-12T23:34:00.002+09:00

this is likely the last post from our current east asian life. tomorrow is our last day in korea, our last day at work. almost everything in our apartment has been packed up and sent home, or thrown away, or given away. our computers will be sent home tomorrow morning by express mail - our bags are (nearly) packed!

goodbye desk ...

our replacements, emma and patrick from ireland, have arrived, and are well on their way to learning the ropes at school. my final days have been spent having snack parties with each of my classes (a class period of literally eating and playing games, totally productive). my last class with some of my little guys this afternoon was spent with six pairs of curious eyes on me as i choked back tears during attendance. ok, and by "choked back tears" i really mean, splotchy red face and massively watering eyes. and emotionally-garbled "did you do your homework?" inquiries.

goodbye students ...

as organized as we've tried to be, a crisis (or two) came up in our southeast asia travel itinerary. we are scheduled to fly to bangkok on wednesday morning, and the currently political state in thailand's capital is not cooperating in our favour. for those that haven't been keeping up with the sensational news, the red shirt protesters have brought their month-long "peaceful" protest to an end. as in, it's no longer peaceful. the military's been called in, 20 people have been killed, and thailand is currently in a state of emergency. so, needless to say, after some minor freakouts (mostly on my part), we've rearranged our schedule and will be skipping bangkok-as-a-first-stop as originally planned. instead, we will immediately head north to chiang mai, where the anti-government protests aren't cramping our style.

goodbye bangkok ... (for now)

thus, our loose itinerary continues as follows:

chiang mai, thailand
siem reap, cambodia - angkor wat
phnom penh, cambodia
phuket, thailand
islands: koh phi phi, koh samui, koh pha ngan, koh tao

... and then back to bangkok, where hopefully the violent protests will have subsided by mid-may. wish us luck! i promise to avoid any civil unrest, at all costs. i by no means am looking to get shot with a rubber bullet. or a real one, for that matter.

so while we wrap up our odds and ends in this part of asia, a new chapter is just about to begin.
goodbye korea, it's been a slice.

cherry blossoms and goodbyes

2010-04-04T22:55:00.007+09:00

happy easter!

despite our absence of a 4-day holiday in korea, i've had a jam-packed weekend. on saturday, i went with some friends to the jinhae cherry blossom festival on the southern coast of korea. mark opted out, so i was on my own with the early morning wake-up. my day started super early (think, 3:45am - yikes) and ended very late (walked in the door past 1:00am, totally zonked), but it was nice to take part in the annual spring ritual and spend some time with friends. also, it's always interesting to do a cross-country trip in a DAY. that's something i could never do at home! all in all, it was a fun, albeit tiring, day.

tomorrow starts our final full week of teaching. our replacements also arrive this week, on tuesday, so we'll be spending most of our school-time training the new guys. as excited as i am to be finished and to hand off my classes, i am going to miss so many of my students (please note that i didn't say all, there are definitely some i won't miss!) and probably most importantly, i'll miss my co-teacher jinny. jinny's been my saviour so many times at work when i thought i was going to lose my mind (she has great power and authority over unruly students, which i sometimes significantly lack - bonus that she speaks their language and often wields a threatening stick); she's also been a really great friend! i don't like thinking about having to say goodbye to all these people who've become so important to me over the past year.

i received an early goodbye note last week from one of my grade six students, grace. although she was still a fairly new student, grace left our hagwon for greener pastures and returned after class one day last week, to give me a card and a small gift. how cute! the note inside was awesome (this is verbatim):

dear alex teacher hello! alex teacher. i'll stop to english academy. thank you for among the 2 month. you're very x1000 kind, pretty, and goodness. you're not korean then i can't said "thank you. i can't speak english very well (insert hand-drawn emoticon). we are not conversation very much but i feel your favor and kindness. i remember you! (insert emoticon) i love you bye bye... from grace

what! we are in conversation all the time, grace. if by "conversation" you mean me speaking to you and your peers and you looking back at me uninterested/blankly. regardless, totally adorable and flattering and heart warming. i can't wait to receive 62 more ...

rabbit, rabbit

2010-04-01T00:15:00.009+09:00

goodbye march, and hello april.

we've officially returned to our month of arrival, which means 14 days left in korea. my vocabulary can't get past the holy crap stage. i'm just an irritating broken record about how fast this year has gone and how soon we'll be leaving it all behind.

however, we've got plenty to do in the next coming days. as per usual, my loose ends will be tied in last minute, procrastinating fashion.

no biggie. we've only got to ...

get travel insurance
book a hostel in bangkok (suggestions, anyone?)
send more/all belongings home in boxes for the slow boat
pick up our pension reimbursement
wire money home
pack !
get passport-sized photos done for visas
rid our apartment of as much furniture as possible
throw ourselves an amazing goodbye party

the life 180 is right around the corner (again). wild times!

also, i promise to try to put more effort into future posts and not just vaguely ramble about how blown away i am by the fast-approaching end of our contract. but. still!

cough cough cough

2010-03-23T00:23:00.007+09:00

this is what rolled into town this past weekend.

south korea experienced its worst ever-recorded case of yellow dust on saturday and sunday. and more is expected to come.

this phenomenon is a regular occurrence in eastern asia's springtime months, but it has been increasing in severity over the past ten years due to deforestation and higher pollution levels. the dust is said to originate in mongolia (or, more specifically, the gobi desert), to then blow across china, and turn korean skies an eerie apocalyptic orange.

amongst other things ...

the dust also wreaks havoc on respiratory functioning, what with being full of pollutants and carcinogens, in addition to the long list of contaminants found here. blech. despite closing ourselves in our apartment for the day (what hangover? i was hiding from the dust!), i still have a tickle-y throat + hacking cough days later. we had two co-workers sick with throat problems at work today. time to break out the H1N1 mask.

(photo via flickr korea images)

the newest and smallest additions to my teaching day

2010-03-20T13:40:00.000+09:00

really, there isn't enough content on this blog about my students, considering they take up a massive bulk of my work week/life in general. and while i favour some students over others, the addition of a brand new grade one class in my schedule has definitely won all of my love and attention.

12 new-to-english + new-to-our-academy students arrived wide-eyed and terrified two mondays ago. their backpacks were clean, over-sized, and never used (and they didn't know how to open them ...). they had never had class with a foreign teacher, and i had to assign a dozen english nicknames. it's been an interesting and bumpy start, what with them not knowing any english and me not knowing ~~any korean~~ enough korean to hold a conversation. i've improvised with my extensive charades abilities, and by adding dancing and hand actions to story time - goodbye conventional classroom conduct! they've since been split into two classes of six (one clever class, and one not-so-clever class), so now they keep me busy on both days of my rotating two-day schedule.

i'm totally biased because they get away with so much more bad behaviour as a result of being just so cute! i've had my hair pulled, nosy six-year-old eyes trying to peep down my shirt, and my ear screamed in. oh wait, that was all from little trouble-maker kevin ...

he looks so innocent, no? forgive him his inappropriate behaviour because he's just so small and adorable! i named him after my sister's boyfriend, and big canadian kevin has been inundated with updates about his little korean namesake. and with the pronunciation of "v" being a big challenge for native korean speakers, he can instead be referred to as "kebin."

clockwise from left: ian, blake (and his monkey face), paige, jake's mouth, and alex teacher.

the whole "clever class" crew: dean, ian, blake, paige, jake, and liz. mono-syllable names like woah.

representing half of the not-so-clever class: cindy, travis, and mick.

travis is by far the most polite and well-behaved student. he's super small and had a bit of difficulty with his new name. it took some practice to get away from "cherbis," but he's coming along. definitely one of my faves. every class is ended with his lingering at the door for a second "goodbye alex teacher!" and a big grin. insert heart swelling here.

me and my little group: (L to R) cindy, blake, liz, paige, ian, mick (with an awesome boy band pensive chin holding pose), travis, jake, kevin, dean, simon, and joey.

i'll be really sad when my time with these little guys ends. but i suppose there's only so much hair-pulling i can take ...

화이트데이

2010-03-15T11:32:00.003+09:00

this past sunday, march 14th, was "white day" in korea. and while the name of this day could initially be regarded as something potentially racist (woo! caucasian day!), rest assured, it's not.

white day (or, 화이트데이) lands exactly one month post valentine's day, and is sort of like v-day part two. except this time, it's specifically for women to accept chocolates and/or candies from their loved ones. yes! i like. mark gave me a box of chocolates, and even some of my students were on their game, passing me little chocolates and individually-wrapped bags of candies in class on friday afternoon. this must mean they actually love me!

apparently, white day's dark sister black day is also observed in south korea. one month from today, while mark and i board a plane bound for thailand and end our hagwon days forever*, singles in korea will be celebrating their sans relationship freedom by getting together eating jajangmyeon.

*ONE MONTH LEFT IN KOREA! holy crap.

(picture via okkorea)

cats: the animal, not the musical

2010-03-07T15:33:00.013+09:00

what better way to fill the void of wanting-but-not-having a pet than by visiting one of seoul's animal cafés?

originating in taiwan, and growing increasingly popular in japan, there are now a number of pet coffee shops popping up around seoul. cat or dog cafés are literally facilities that serve hot and cold beverages, and allow patrons to enjoy their brew while potentially being swarmed by felines or canines. this set up caters to those who are unable to have pets due to limited space at home. or, in my case, ex-pat who had to leave an ~~indulged~~ extremely loved house cat behind.

so, on saturday, maddie and i (shameless cat-lovers) decided to check out hongdae's gio cat. for an "admission fee" of ₩8,000 (which also includes a beverage) you are free to hang out at the café for over two hours. and while it's against the rules to pick up or disturb any sleeping animals, you can enjoy your coffee while they crawl into your lap. or in my case, sleep on a nearby chair. ... nearly as good.

cats, cats everywhere.

the cat "menu" was a sort of yearbook letting us know their names, breeds, and temperament. i liked that mong-sil the himalayan was known for "always closing eyes". uhh ... or, sleeping?

there was a small rumble on maddie's lap.

cat microwave!

best hair cut EVER. seriously.

ok, my stint as a blogging cat-lady has now ended. maddie's feline loving review (and pics) are found here.

CA-NA-DA! CA-NA-DA!

2010-03-01T17:17:00.008+09:00

(via torontoist)

congratulations, canada! thanks to the men's hockey team and a nail-biting-edge-of-your-seat game, we defeated USA and proved whose sport hockey is. what an awesome ending to the olympics. feeling so proud to be canadian, and so grateful that mark ~~forced~~ encouraged me to get up at 4:30am and host a small gathering of friends for wee-hours-of-the-morning game-watching.

now, if only we could've joined in the post-game revelry in the middle of yonge street.

김연아 fever

2010-02-28T16:17:00.007+09:00

while the olympics are coming to a close (ahh! what are we going to do with all of our free time now??), amidst the excitement of canada's gold medal glory, is the contagious pride for korea's shining star: figure skater kim yu-na.

her publicity is inescapable around here. she's promoting every product on TV and my students have turned her name into a sentence/question/exclamation in itself - "teacher! kim yu-na!?" the hype about her gold medal win even seeped into our teacher's meetings' news twice (both times being presumptive announcements, as she hadn't yet won ... but, whatever. might as well assume. and pre-celebrate). the time difference required us to be at work during her skating times, so the korean teachers could be found huddled around a cell phone, watching her performance on DMB (digital media broadcasting, or TV on your hand phone for those only familiar with conventional media formats).

i've given in to the queen yu-na love, and was thrilled to see her olympic record performance earn her a gold. i never hesitate to inform all my students that she lives and trains in toronto. thus, she's korean-canadian, just like me! ha.

all athlete/prodigy/gold-medal-olympian gushing aside, i do enjoy that her coach, brian orser, got to make an appearance in one of her many korean celebrity endorsements. this commercial for samsung hauzen zero air conditioner sort of makes him look simultaneously british and overweight, but one of my korean co-workers still raved about how "handsome!" he is. hmm.

a day at the spa

2010-02-21T19:37:00.009+09:00

this saturday, i had my first experience at a korean jjimjilbang.

a jjimjilbang (or 찜질방) is more or less a public bathhouse, and they are extremely popular among koreans. this is the place to relax and unwind, and most are open 24 hours and thus also provide a place to sleep on the cheap (usually ₩6,000-₩10,000; roughly $5-$9CDN). housed inside are not only jacuzzis and showers and saunas and steam rooms of varying size and specifications, but often also a gym, cafes, TVs, restaurants, arcades and more.

there are several moderately-sized jjimjilbangs in our neighbourhood that my foreign friends and co-workers have frequented several times, but i had yet to indulge. i have to admit, while curious about the whole experience, i was feeling nervous and modest about the nudity bit of it. you see, there's no such thing as swimsuit-wearing going on at the jjimjilbang. the spa areas are gender segregated and clothes-free. meaning, i quickly had to get over any intimidation about lounging around in the buff if i was going to partake.

so, i decided to get over it! on saturday, breda, maddie and i headed into seoul to check out yongsan dragon hill spa, one of the largest jjimjilbangs in south korea. although a bit pricier than others, with a ₩12,000 entrance fee on weekends, it houses 6 floors of upscale pampering.

and it ended up being a very interesting and relaxing experience. we showered and sampled several hot tubs of varying temperatures. my favourite tub was probably the outdoor (yes, outdoor!) jacuzzi. the indoor showers and saunas share space with short individual sinks with stools for shampooing and personal scrubbing. the bulk of the patrons occupied these sinks, and were busy soaping and hosing themselves down. after having enough of the hot baths, we changed into our pajamas - provided shorts + tshirt uniform - and enjoyed some massaging chairs (significantly more budget friendly than the rubs and scrubs provided by nearly-nude spa employees). among the many saunas and sweating rooms we sampled, one was literally called a "kiln" which is quite fitting considering it had a waist-high entrance and a sloped roof highly resembling an over-sized oven.

in the co-ed section of the jjimjilbang, there are cafes and snack bars to satisfy your appetite (where hard boiled eggs seem to be the food of choice). there is also a large common room for floor sprawling, where we caught part of a live magic show. the place was packed, and i'd estimate there was an audience of at least 200 pajama-lounging koreans for the somewhat unexpected but enjoyable performance.

after almost 3 hours of relaxation, we felt we'd gotten the most out of our experience. and while the admission fee lets you rest and recharge for up to 12 hours, i'm pretty sure i would have shriveled into a prune after that long.

the jjimjilbang was an interesting and relaxing cultural experience. it was worth the money, and definitely worth the nudity!

olympics and tigers and meeko ... oh my.

2010-02-15T21:08:00.019+09:00

happy seollal (설날), or lunar new year + valentine's day + gold medal win for canada.

whew, so many things to celebrate on this glorious february long weekend. most importantly, at least in these parts, was the beginning of the korean calendar. goodbye year of the ox, hello year of the tiger. schools and businesses were closed for the better part of the weekend, as many koreans head out of town to visit family over the holiday. the new year coincided with valentine's on february 14th, and accordingly the day before and after a holiday are usually designated as days off as well, so a 3-day weekend it was. even the bank was closed this weekend, to the extent that my ATM card wouldn't function and i ended up being cash-less. yikes.

while mark and i didn't dress up in hanbok and/or pay respects to family shrines like the better part of the country, we were cat-sitting for our friend sarah for three days. 6-month-old meeko was our houseguest, and all of our plants ended up having to be locked in the spare room. still a kitten, we quickly realized that meeko thoroughly enjoys eating and biting things, like houseplants and arms and hands and elbows. he also likes tearing maniacally through the apartment and launching himself into small and/or high spaces. i accidentally closed him in the refrigerator without noticing, but it was only for 30 seconds, max. sorry sarah. his bursts of energy were evenly weighed with sleeping and cuddling-time. cute overload.

in between cat-sitting, we had a mini-party for the olympic opening ceremonies, which aired saturday morning at 11am here. i'm fully in the midst of total olympic fever and even made sure to rock my canada mittens and wave to the athletes on tv. GO CANADA! also, on the subject of patriotism and vancouver 2010 spirit, make sure to check out these olympic designs, courtesy of mark's good friend james tuer.

now, don't get me wrong, while i wear my canadian pride on my sleeve, i must admit: the opening ceremonies were a bit of a bore. i keep flip-flopping in labeling it a "snooze-fest" because i feel like a little bit of my nationalism dies with that tagging ... but. too long. too boring. mechanical defect on fourth arm in torch lighting (which meant catriona le may doan just had to stand there awkwardly instead of participating in such a momentous occasion). also, way to make it look like all canadians are either fiddle-playing ashley macisaacs or first nations members. and bryan adams? really? k.d. lang ... oh man. needless to say, i was really not as impressed as i could have been.

regardless, olympic fever prevails. and while our temporary tiger, meeko, has since returned to his own home (ooh, perfect cheesy segue-conclusion!), i wish a happy year of the tiger to everyone.

what with it being superbowl sunday ...

2010-02-07T16:01:00.006+09:00

why not combine a little k-pop with football fandom? here i present girls' generation's (or, 소녀시대) latest catchy pop hit, oh!:

this is likely the closest i will get to celebrating the superbowl (ie, not very close at all). it doesn't help that being 14 hours ahead of hometime makes for a monday-morning-8am-broadcast. and while there was an invite to go into seoul during rush hour tomorrow for bloody marys, american breakfast, and football watching, i'll have to decline. who's playing, anyway?

on the other hand, this sports fan passivity should take a different turn when it comes to the winter olympics next week, just so you know. i can't say i'll be joining mark in his 5am viewing plans for the gold cup game, but i will do my best to be a proud canadian in another time zone.

생일 축하합니다 madeline teacher!

2010-01-31T23:37:00.015+09:00

january 30th marked the day of birth of our good friend and co-worker maddie. we celebrated on friday evening with a large galbi dinner party and many shots of soju, followed by some 맥주 at our favourite local hangout, beer ocean. if you'll recall, we spent another birthday here back in may. thankfully, we didn't have any vomit do-overs this time around. (at least not by me, madeline will have to speak for herself ...)

all in all, a great time was had, and we capped the night off with several late night hours in the noraebang (노래방, or singing room). nothing like belting a few tunes to commemorate the birthday girl. while the noraebang usually has a wide variety of english/western songs to choose from, we foreigners can sometimes be limited in viable selections - the specific song you're looking for never seems to be available, and there are often a ton of really hit-or-miss options. on top of that, anything too slow is boring (and risks being "next"-ed by your drunk friends) and anything too fast proves impossible to keep up (think, outkast's bombs over baghdad - hello, challenge!). while weezer's say it ain't so, the cranberries' zombie, and oasis's don't look back in anger have become our group's go-tos, it's always awesome to find a diamond in the rough. or rather, a goodie amongst the many unknown and/or random tracks (it also doesn't help that songs are listed by title, and not by artist). friday's gems included blondie's heart of glass, no doubt's cover of talk talk's it's my life, and kelly clarkson's since u been gone. eugh, i also vaguely recall doing a solo performance of britney's overprotected ... yikes.

regardless, it was a successful birthday spent, dangler-touching* and all. happy birthday!

* a method of reducing nausea, as passed down to young grasshopper madeline from wise (and much experienced) alex teacher

the "what's happening" for january

2010-01-26T22:50:00.011+09:00

is a whole lot of working, relaxing, and going to the gym. gym, tan, laundry. (GTL). lather, rinse, repeat.

in other, more interesting news, we picked up a copy of lonely's planet's southeast asia on a shoestring in itaewon last weekend, and the countdown can now officially begin.

so here you go:

this means we're in the home stretch of our contract and time here in korea, and less than three months away from backpacking and beach lounging in thailand, cambodia, vietnam and hopefully, laos. our next big adventure begins as soon our employment obligations are fulfilled mid-april. and while this anticipation will likely make the next 2.5 months crawl by, i know i should (and will!) appreciate the rest of our time in korea.

regardless of how exciting/surreal/anticipatory south east asia travels feel, the return to canada in less than four short months will be reverse culture shock to the extreme. i know both mark and i are bursting with excitement to see friends and family (and other miscellaneous objects, vehicles, materials, and animals), but it will definitely be a bizarre transition.

we're in the last quarter of our year here dear readers, and with that we'll be spending the next 2+ months relishing all the things we've grown to love about korea. time to make the most of the next 76 days ...

* note: in hindsight, this post could be misread to think that mark and i are in a jaded, we're-over-korea annoying mindset, what with an ELECTRONIC COUNTDOWN and what not. i just want to clarify that while we are very excited for our upcoming travels and eventually returning to the great white north, we love korea and by no means want to undermine or hasten our experience here. xo

big in japan: christmas in tokyo

2010-01-10T15:48:00.004+09:00

it's HERE. sorry for the delay. here's an abbreviated synopsis/review of our holidays in tokyo, conveniently laid out in categorized bullets.

the good:

the hotel: we originally thought we'd been bunking with the son of a friend of klara's (which had the potential to be very small and imposing) and when that fell through we were upgraded to two rooms at the shinagawa prince hotel, in which we had our own room and access to 8 in-house restaurants.
being within walking distance to tokyo tower; being able to see it lit up at night from our hotel room window.
our day tours: we signed up to do a city tour of tokyo on boxing day + a tour of mt fuji the day following and both were really informative, well-organized, and highly recommended. if you're heading to tokyo on a time limit, let me suggest checking out viator's sightseeing options
seeing the top of mt fuji from breakfast at our hotel on the 38th floor - the sky was clear enough to see it, more than 95kms away.
to go from seeing mt fuji from breakfast in downtown tokyo, to visiting the fourth station in the trek up its slope - 2020m high.
exploring meiji shinto shrine, asakusa kannon temple, and the imperial palace's east garden.
visiting nakamise shopping street, a colourful shopping arcade crammed with tiny food vendors and souvenir shops: perfect for purchasing kimonos and t-shirts and phone charms and fans
a cruise of tokyo bay: awesome for photo ops of the tokyo skyline and the iconic rainbow bridge
later taking the rainbow bridge to man-made island, odaiba.
vending machines. everywhere. literally, at least one on every block. selling only beverages, of course. snacks aren't necessary to maintain svelte-ness.
driving on the other side of the road. yes, that's right. the japanese join the ranks of the british and kiwis with left-lane right-of-ways.
the weather! we escaped the cold and snow of winter in korea and embraced the mid-fall temperatures of japan. i even got away without a coat one day, it was wonderful.
free admission to the aquarium housed within our hotel.
high speed bullet train! we took the shinkansen back to tokyo from mt fuji, and it turns an 1.5 hour bus ride into 30 minutes, at 300km/hour. futuristic-ly fast.

the bad:

the traffic, both vehicular and human. people, people everywhere. (that being said, this is highly similar to seoul ...)
we never got to take the subway! i really wanted to see if those "pusher" people are for real.
the prices. tokyo lives up to its reputation in the expensive department. our christmas day dinner was a delicious though minimal spread of nine sushi and sashimi rolls, an order of tempura, mysterious meat skewers, and two asahi draft beers and equaled almost $100 CDN. outlandish.
a minor food poisoning experience. i blame the raw tuna, but i was a tad unwell our last day in tokyo.
time constraints. as with any vacation, you can't see it all. and while we did well for our 72 hours in japan, i wish we had had more time to explore. driving through harajuku and ginza shopping district just didn't cut it!

the weird/unique/wish-i-lived-in-japan stuff:

the overall aesthetic of the city. organized urban planning, numerous tall and extremely slim buildings, structures built into unique situations (ie, coffee shops built into underpasses), creative ways to fit a massive population into a minimal space.
cleanliness. i saw barely any litter and every bathroom i visited was spotless. and had soap and jet-powered hand dryers.
architecture. (slim buildings included.) the fuji television headquarters for instance.
everyone in tokyo runs. maybe it's a maintaining-thinness-in-the-city thing. we saw a lot of runners.
the christmas decorations. gorgeous trees and tinsel the day we arrived, all quickly vanished come december 26th. xmas isn't a big deal for the japanese, and with oshogatsu (or new year's) ranking significantly more important, they ditch the trees ASAP and begin decorating the town with kadomatsu, or bamboo wreath displays, that are supposed to bring good luck for the new year.

all in all, a christmas/holiday success. a massive thank you to klara for her generosity, curiosity and enthusiasm for asian culture, for being a mom (and a surrogate mom to me) during the i-miss-my-family festive season, and of course, for putting up with mark and me for 10 days.

winter woahs.

2010-01-06T23:03:00.010+09:00

we thought we'd escaped canadian winter by, oh, you know, living outside of canada for a year. unfortunately, due to either global warming or poor luck (or a terrible combination of the two), we're in the midst of winter climate like south korea's never experienced.

or, at least not since they started recording data. in 1937.

on monday, we got the heaviest snowfall that the country has had in over 70 years: 26 centimetres+. and while this is nothing out of the ordinary for us canadians, most koreans aren't even used to a little snow, let alone a lot. and with not being used to such accumulation, they had to call in the military to help clean up. though, i'm not sure what is meant by "clean up" as nothing has been plowed or cleared in our neighbourhood and the only snow-removal tools i've seen have been a couple of shovels and some brooms (really).

so, classes were canceled on monday and we got a snow day, which was a nice work-mandated hibernation day. the snow has since stopped falling, but the temperature has now dropped to a sub-arctic level, one that makes leaving the apartment extremely unbearable. tomorrow's high is -10°C ... time to bundle up!

hello twenty ten.

2010-01-02T20:16:00.007+09:00

i've got an upcoming post about our amazing christmas vacation in tokyo with mark's mom, klara (and it includes balmy snow-free weather, sushi, mt fuji, shrines, kimonos, tokyo tower, and much much more), but by "upcoming" i mean: still in my brain needing to be formulated and my laziness is getting the better of me. the new year didn't bring me a glorious, non-procrastinate-y work ethic, unfortunately!

because, YES! it's 2010 ... in case you didn't know. twenty ten ("two thousand and ten" is too long and tongue garble-y, let's simplify) seems far too futuristic to be present day. it also briefly worried me that i could clearly recall what i did to celebrate NYE a decade ago, when i was sixteen and foolish. this is the third decade-change new years eve i've been alive for, which also reminds me that i'll turn 30 this decade. dear god. i then reconfirmed my youth by reminding myself that this was the fourth decade-change new years for both of my sisters, and then i felt better. wink!

this year, instead of party-going and boozing we shared a quiet night inside our apartment and spared ourselves the -22° C temperatures outside. in lieu of a ball dropping in times square, seoul offered a bell being gonged at city hall at midnight. there was minimal countdown hype, which was kind of nice. we watched the live broadcast (which mostly involved lip-synching k-pop performances), played yahtzee, blew noisemakers, and called family members post-midnight for "happy new year from the future!" phone calls. all in all, it was a simple but sufficient celebration.

our holiday excitement came to an end this morning, with klara leaving on a flight home. it's always nice having visitors, and a mom over the holidays was particularly wonderful! we were sad to see her go, but her departure also indicates the last and final stretch of our contract. we've only got 100 days left - so, happy new year! and see you soon!

merry christmas to all ... !

2009-12-24T23:17:00.000+09:00

apologies for the minor hiatus, things have been in a holiday whirlwind around here.

mark's mom, klara, safely arrived in korea last night, and had a suitcase (or two) full of christmas presents in tow. we can lovingly refer to her as korean santa, as well. we are very excited that she's here to help us celebrate the holidays.

tonight, in celebration of christmas eve, we had reservations after work at one of our favourite duck barbecue restaurant. after a delicious dinner, we headed home for gift exchange and cake eating - as per korean christmas tradition. a huge thank you to EVERYONE who sent gifts to us, we are lucky to have such generous and thoughtful friends and family members! mark and i were royally spoiled this season. not that i mind, of course. i am very happy that santa was able to find us all the way in korea, and i now i am equipped with new clothes, pajamas, and socks, canadian olympic gear, much-needed toiletries, a plethora of december-issue magazines, and groceries! oh poptarts and instant oatmeal how i've missed thee. a special thank you not only to mom/santa (love!), but to jenn g, paige, nicole, cindy, natalie, and bouche for the surprise package - i love and miss you girls!

we spent the rest of the evening packing and preparing for the second half of our destination christmas: tomorrow morning we are off to tokyo - merry japanese christmas to us! and merry regular christmas to you!

love, alex & mark xoxo

돌잔치: baby's first birthday

2009-12-14T22:14:00.015+09:00

turning 1 in korea is a really big deal. such a big deal, in fact, that your parents will throw a giant wedding-like celebration in your honour, complete with unlimited buffet and booze and 100+ of your closest friends and colleagues (or, er, their closest friends and colleagues, rather).

this past saturday, mark and i + madeline and our favourite korean teachers, were invited to celebrate the 1-year anniversary (doljanchi, or 돌잔치) of the youngest son of our vice-principal ... whose other son also happens to be my student, ray - just to complicate your understanding of our relationship to the party-throwers.

we were initially a little awkward about going: we'd be the only english-speaking foreigners, we didn't want to impose on a traditional family event, we potentially had other more "fun" things to do with our saturday night. yet, the VP insisted we were welcome, and there was a free buffet. also, when it comes down to it, it's important to us to experience unique things about korean culture and this sure beat an all-night foreigner party in seoul, culture-wise.

while 1st birthday celebrations were originally extra-significant due to low infant-mortality rates, the purpose is now more an elaborate tradition. one the most important rituals performed at this party is called doljabi, or the opportunity for the baby to "choose" his future. this little bit of predestination is done by presenting the baby with a tray of six objects representing his life path, and whichever one he selects is symbolic of his fate. in this case:

a piece of string/long life
money/wealth
a microphone/a performer: musician, host, entertainer, etc.
a stethoscope/a doctor
a computer mouse/a computer technician, programmer, pro-gamer (?)
a pencil/a scholar or academic

after hearing stories of this event, i wondered how accurate the selection process could be. what happened if the baby chose nothing? what if he simultaneously chose two objects? i was disappointed that none of the koreans who'd accompanied us to the party could remember what had happened at their own 1st birthdays.

nevertheless, as we arrived at the banquet hall we were asked to drop our ticket stub - or vote - into one of the six suitable destinies' assigned jars for a chance to win a prize if our choice matched the baby's. i somewhat arbitrarily chose a computer mouse, and mark voted for the stethoscope.

while we indulged in the buffet, the performance began at the head table. literally, the baby's party had a wedding-like head table! mom and dad and baby (and ray), all dressed in matching hanbok and accompanied by an emcee, presented the birthday boy with his tray of items. despite his tears and evident unhappiness of being in the spotlight/blaze of camera flashes, he ended up picking the stethoscope - thus, a future doctor - and also, making mark a winner!

make that, the only winner.

yes, somehow, with a guest list of nearly 100 attendees, mark was the only person to predict the stethoscope choice. as the parents had pre-planned for 3 prize winners, the emcee then had mom choose a vote from her #1 choice for baby, and then dad do the same. this resulted in maddie being randomly selected for a prize as well! luck of the foreigner, i suppose.

all in all, it was a fun night and a really interesting experience. i also enjoyed the plethora of cute korean babies and children at the party, including a coworker's 3-year-old son who won me over completely with his talent of winking and saying "i love you" in english. and in the end, mark's prize turned out to be rose-scented body lotion and shower gel, so guess who's the winner after all?

wink ! ^.-

cute overload

2009-12-12T12:21:00.000+09:00

i really want a korean child. with dance moves.

(via buncha banchan)

o christmas tree

2009-12-08T22:32:00.002+09:00

so, i gave in and dragged mark to the minimal christmas section of lotte mart tonight. i'd be trying hard to let my frugal conscience (wait, my what?) do the decision-making and recognize that decorating our apartment for the holidays isn't necessary since we're leaving for vacation on december 25th ...

but, that ideology didn't really work.

our apartment felt sad without a christmas tree. i'm a sucker for the holidays, and a tree is the most important part! i know that christmas this year is going to be significantly different than years prior, what with being on the other side of the globe and all, but that's no reason to dismiss its excessiveness entirely. despite its only one-time use (for us, i promise i'll try to recycle it to new friends), a ₩20,000 artificial tree felt like a good deal.

i haven't yet determined whether south korea's lack of hype about christmas is going to be a blessing or a curse. sure, there are a few lights and decorations here and there around our neighbourhood; mostly in storefronts and restaurants, and of course, the life-size creepy and bald/hat-less santa that went up in our school's lobby this afternoon ... but you definitely aren't inundated with christmas in this country. i'm sure it could pass somewhat unnoticed if you wanted it to.

but really, who would ever want to do that??

our tiny tannenbaum is no griswold family christmas tree, but it suits us just fine.

elf yourself has reached new levels

2009-12-01T23:43:00.000+09:00

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

ah, it's that time of year again! this, of course, had me in hysterics. i would've posted the "disco" themed one, but there were far too many choreographed elf pelvic thrusts involved ...

happy december from your favourite christmas elves, like woah!

it's the most wonderful time of the year

2009-11-25T00:16:00.003+09:00

while the weirdness of being away from home at christmastime deserves a blog post all of its own, i did want to share the exciting news that we're jet-setting to japan in one month today.

iiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeee !!!!!!!!!!!! (that's a high-pitched squeal of excitement.)

i also kind of love using exciting terms like "jet-setting." it makes me feel really glamorous.

mark's mom, klara, is coming to visit us for 9 days, and we're booked to fly to tokyo on christmas day. so yes, notwithstanding being out of canada and absent from family gatherings, flying to japan for the holidays will make 2009 officially the most bizarre christmas in the history of alex.

on a totally separate note, hopefully we'll get to experience the wonders of the subway while we're there:

or, not? oh dear god. that sort of puts the TTC fair hike and subsequent drama to shame. i wonder how much the subway in japan is?

oh baby, it's cold outside

2009-11-17T23:36:00.003+09:00

it's freaking freezing in korea. and when it's cold in korea, you eat jjigae, or stew, to keep warm. above, a hot bowl of kimchi jjigae served in a stone hot pot will warm you up (and clear your sinuses).

while we experienced a cold snap several weeks ago that lasted 2-3 days, potentially due to neighbouring china's cloud-seeding overdose (and their subsequent early-november blizzard), the frigid temperatures quickly passed, autumn returned, and i danced a figurative dance of joy that i didn't need to invest in a winter coat yet.

well, i spoke (or, danced) too soon. winter seems to be here; seoul's currently got lower temperatures than toronto. whaaat ... NO. this does little for my we've-escaped-the-shitty-canadian-climate gloating. for the record, it's currently -3°C in the greater seoul area.

and while i thoroughly enjoy the ondol heating that warms our apartment, the heat at school is another story. our boss finally gave us the heads up the other week that the "warm wind" was now available for the individual heating+air conditioning combo in our classrooms, and we obviously suppressed giggles at his inadvertent fart joke. why the building is designed in the opposite fashion of the very-effective-and-ubiquitous system of this country is beyond me. never mind that it's a challenge enough to get my students to refrain from opening the windows (and hanging out of them) or turning the thermostat dial in the classroom at their leisure (to which my protests of "teacher only!" are futile), but the heating units are in the ceiling ... and heat rises ... and ...

...

so most of my students are wearing their coats in class. and while the room eventually reaches a nice degree of cozy, you open the door to the hallway and meet a cold blast of frigid air, as the halls are unheated. oh, and all the windows are open in the stairwell. and bathrooms. and walking from my classroom to the teachers' office is sort of like travelling through siberia. i am confused at the theory behind all this. wouldn't it make more sense to heat the entire building?

regardless, winter has apparently arrived in this part of the world, and i suppose it's time to get used to it. i even gave in and went shopping for a coat. time to wear it, in class (while eating jjigae).

now that i'm on an extended vacation ...

2009-11-12T15:51:00.014+09:00

... i've got time to update the blog on a more-than-once-a-week schedule!

the results of my swine flu test came back positive, and i've been assigned a work-mandated leave from school. until potentially next week. eep! while i don't mind the unexpected vacation (especially since i'm no longer feeling inches from death), i do mind feeling like a leper that no one wants to be near. and i resent not being allowed to go into work and not being paid for days off that i didn't choose to take! but i digress ...

yesterday, amid my couch lounging and mad men season 3 marathon, mark was at school experiencing the wonders of 빼빼로 day - or "pepero" day, for non hangul readers. while november 11th is a noted day of remembrance for north americans, in korea, it's a day to ... give, receive, and eat chocolate sticks. pepero, or pocky as they're known at home and in founding japan, come in many different varieties and flavours; everything from your original "biscuit with choco" to almond covered or chocolate filled. to homemade candy coated pepero. or fat cigar-sized sticks of pepero. you name it. and as the date on november 11th resembles four sticks (11/11), it is well suited for this commercial ~~holiday~~ er, "holiday." needless to say, i was quite envious of the haul mark teacher brought home with him last night.

so yes, i've got a free and clear schedule for the next few days while i recover from the much-feared h1n1. i have to admit that i don't mind the minor celebrity status it's brought me - many facebook friends have come out of the woodwork to confirm my swine-y status and wish me a speedy recovery. ooh internet fame!! it's been lovely company to my lonely days of quarantine. well, that and the pile of 빼빼로, of course.

feeling swine-y

2009-11-10T22:19:00.009+09:00

after all my complaining about south korea's overreation to h1n1, i may have overreacted myself this past weekend.

that being said, i won't know for sure until friday, when my (very expensive) test results are handily sent to me via text message. but yes, i spent this past weekend feeling very close to death; complete with alternating chills and sweats, a chesty/phlegmy cough, lack of appetite and a 3-day-long headache. it was very very very very very awful.

mark dutifully accompanied my whiny and complain-y self to the emergency room at the hospital in uijeongbu on sunday, as that was all that was open. i still have yet to determine whether that was an overreaction in itself - it seems to be the korean thing to do, to go directly to the hospital when needing any kind of medical attention. and swine flu is currently the #1 cause for health concerns in this country. yet, any ER is overwhelming. and while i wanted my feeling terrible-ness to get checked out, i felt sort of awkward waiting temporarily next to beds with visibly sick and writhing and needingmuchmoreattentionthanido patients.

regardless, a helpful nurse who spoke english (thankgod!) accompanied me for "plu testing", which involved sticking a massive swab up my nose and sealing said swab in a sterile container. and ... that was it. they asked me my symptoms and swabbed me. then the administration desk tried to charge me ₩500,000 (more than $450CDN) for the test as i'd forgotten my insurance card. nevermind the fact that i felt so out of it i'd spelled my own name wrong on the hospital admittance form, i knew this was a ridiculous sum, bacon death or not. thankfully, behind-the-desk personnel did some deeper investigation, and realized i'd been to the hospital before and my insurance information was in their computers. as a result, i left with 5 days worth of tamiflu, and one swine flu test - results pending - for ₩89,000 ($80CDN). the whole ordeal took less than an hour.

so, now that i'm feeling better, i'm interested to find out these test results. though i won't know how to overreact to finding out i have swine flu ... you know, when i don't have it anymore.

goodbye october

2009-11-03T16:48:00.011+09:00

it was a happy halloween indeed. in the end, the costumes didn't end up coordinating, but they were both respectively fabulous. (that's mark behind the mask, just in case you were confused.) this indian and monkey butler headed to a house party in uijeongbu with some of our costumed friends and had an excellent night.

in other breaking news, we were informed today of the long-awaited fate of our apartment: we're keeping it! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! though i may not have mentioned it on here, we went into our contract aware that the lease on our wonderful 3-bedroom abode would be expiring at the end of august. and from there, they wanted to shuttle us into an officetel, or one-room apartment for the two of us. i don't know what sounds like relationship bliss to you, but rooming together in dorm-sized accommodations is not it! knowing well in advance that we'd be unhappy with the new digs, we responsibly staged our protest months ago.

however, when things get done korean-style, it's sometimes at a snail's pace. and there are often a lot of vague responses to requests and pleas and no clear answers. our lease ended up being extended until the end of october, which just sort of extended this excruciating situation. last week, when november first was looming at the end of our calendars, both mark and i were hesitant to bring it up. because it's also korean-style to get-it-done-last-minute. i was dreading hearing on the friday that we'd have to pack up and move sunday.

but despite all this anxiety, our answer's finally here and it doesn't involve downsizing! we're relieved and elated and, needless to say, busy preparing for a celebratory "housewarming."

halloween's a-coming

2009-10-26T23:56:00.008+09:00

and this may or may not be my inspiration for this year's costume:

mark vetoed wayne & garth (boo!). and for whatever reason, i'm really drawn to wearing a feather-y headdress.

still brainstorming ...

makeover, makeover !

2009-10-21T00:38:00.018+09:00

mark to the rescue ...

this past weekend inadvertently became the weekend of haircuts. our kiwi friend charles showed up at our door on sunday evening with an "urgent" need for mark's clippers. turns out he'd had a drunken all-nighter-into-morning in seoul and in a blurry turn of events, hair cutting with korean cooking scissors had seemed like an ingenious idea. mark helped him (soberly) sort out his lopsided self-'do.

and on saturday, as mentioned, i finally succumbed to my own avoidance of korean hairstylists, and got my 6 months of neglect dealt with. on a recommendation from a co-worker, i went to see michelle at the green turtle in itaewon, who did an amazing job. if you're looking for highlights and/or a good haircut, make an appointment (02)790-6696; a full head + cut only cost me ₩75,000. finding a stylist who knows foreign hair is key for colouring, unless you're ok with orange! bonus, i now semi-resemble garth with my glasses on. shwing!

so, here's the before ...

... and the after

my students told me "teacher! hair: bright" and "you, dye?" (which i briefly misinterpreted as "you die!"). they also made hand gestures in front of their foreheads which i'm assuming is the universal sign for bangs. i suppose you can't ask for much from foreign children in the way of new hairdo commentary.

the last two weeks in review, as per usual

2009-10-16T23:47:00.009+09:00

here's a page or two out of our post-china day planner:

we went to the seoul grand park zoo and it was sunny and perfect fall weather. the zoo in seoul is the tenth largest in the world and has a chair lift to transport you from the entrance of seoul grand park to the animals (see pic). the park is situated in a valley south of seoul, and the lift takes you through trees and over a lake. it was awesome. we bought tickets to the dolphin show for only ₩2,000 and were definitely the only foreigners + the only people over the age of 10 who didn't have an entourage of children ...

last weekend, we went to an awkward and entertaining "dinner party" at our wealthy bosses' ... ahem ... estate. the lees don't speak any english, so events with them are always more entertaining after a few drinks when communication becomes through charades instead of through a fumbling english translation (think, 5 minutes of loud and emphatic korean paused for a 1 and a half minute english blurb that makes you wonder if that was really what was said).
and while they live in an apartment like 95% of the korean population, their flat was stunning. marble floors, over 5 crystal chandeliers, the hugest non-projector flat screen television i've ever seen. they even have hired help. we drank very expensive whiskey and hula hooped in their living room. it was sort of awesome.

i've been keeping busy during the week as i've joined the local gym. and while it has adequate facilities (free personal training, free work out clothes, indoor driving range anyone?) the machines are a little more out-dated. and by out-dated, i mean potentially in a 1980s time warp. move over goodlife, this workout club offers not only treadmills, recumbent bikes, steppers, and weight machines, but also the dream healther. hello, old school. literally, it's a machine with a platform that vibrates to shake all your fat away. and while standing on it for five minutes is recommended, so is placing your hands instead of your feet on the platform. uhh, what? alternative butt-in-the-air fat jiggling? the gym also has two (currently nameless) machines that have the giant elastic that fits over your ass to wiggle your gluteus maximus skinny. yes, like this. while i'm really skeptical of how efficient fat-jiggling is when it comes to weight loss, i suppose you could take a look at the size of most locals around here ... i'll report back with my results.

tomorrow, i'm off to brave the hairdressing world of korea. i've been putting off cutting my hair, despite there being 3 salons on every block around here. but after 6 months of highlight grow-out and trimming my own bangs, i've given in. it's overdue. i even got a "teacher! hair half yellow half brown!" today, just to cement my need for an appointment. perfect.

and finally: yes, that's right. 6 months. SIX MONTHS! what a crazy feeling to pass over the hump of our year here. less time to go than what we've already got under our belt. the passage of time has officially boggled my mind.

mark and alex in china

2009-10-05T22:35:00.034+09:00

we spent the last four days in china and it was jam-packed and awesome.

DAY ONE 天一

we left early thursday morning, and arrived in beijing around 2:30pm and met our tour group at the airport. we lucked out, as despite it being a holiday weekend in both korea and in china, there were only 9 people on our tour (and as we would soon find out, the number '9' to the chinese means 'super', so, agreed). thursday, being the first of october, marked the 60th anniversary of the people's republic of china, and thus our arrival coincided with a massive celebration, including a huge light show and 3-D fireworks in tian'anmen square. instead of seeing the spectacle in-person (which would have been lovely in theory, but realistically: being packed like a sardine into a sea of people + high security = not likely/not fun), we happily watched the live broadcast from our cozy hotel room after visiting the temple of heaven, eating peking duck, and watching a cirque-du-soleil-rival-worthy acrobatic show - seriously, amazing!

DAY TWO 天二

on friday, we started our day early and headed out of the city to the great wall, which is about an hour outside of beijing. however, first our tour decided to stop at a jade factory (ie, wholesale shop). this was our first experience with the blatant buy-buy-watch-our-salespitch-and-be-swayed theme that underlined a lot of our tour. somewhat terrible ... but mostly just boring! i didn't want to buy an overpriced gaudy-looking bangle, and mark definitely didn't! we were sort of annoyed to have to wait around for 45 minutes while several of our tour-mates got duped, but i suppose all is part-and-parcel of participating in a heavily itinerary-oriented organized tour.

we got to the great wall just before midday, and it was nothing short of spectacular. though, as we approached, you could see the masses of human traffic trying to simultaneously ascend and descend ... eep! the crowds were, well, crowds. and the trek was steep! this made for a hazardous climb as people would stop to take breaks and to take pictures and you'd have to wait. i'm not sure what i was expecting, but it was hard work! i rewarded myself with a cheesy "i climbed the great wall" t-shirt. totally deserved.

friday's lunch was at a chinese food place which was delicious - that being said, i had nothing but rave reviews for everything we ate in beijing. we drank a shot of stronger-than-soju liquor that i can't remember the name of. lunch (as well as thursday night's dinner) was served on multiple plates for sharing on a lazy susan in the centre of the table. convenient!

in the afternoon we drove past the olympic village for photo opportunities of the beijing national stadium (aka, the "bird's nest") and the national aquatics center (aka, the "water cube"). olympic village included, beijing has some phenomenal architecture.

we also visited the summer palace, an ancient residential lakeside sprawl where emperors and empresses used to live. mostly, it just made me realize how boring and/or non-existent canadian history is. my apologies to history lovers and supporters, but canada's past doesn't hold a candle to the tumult + beauty + heartbreak + glamour + lavishness + scandal (and so on ...) of asian history.
next, a "chinese tea ceremony" (as our itinerary read). more like, a tea house where we sampled four types of tea (this was cool, no complaints), but then has the option to buy buy buy again! while the teas we tried were all delicious, i don't have a need for a $20CDN small container of loose tea, even if it is authentically chinese. one of our tour-mates spent over $158CDN on tea! wow.

from there, we went for dinner - a traditional mongolian meal called hotpot. this involves having your own pot of boiling sesame broth and putting various items in it, to cook, dip, and eat - mostly thinly sliced meat, leafy veggies, and different kinds of noodles.

on our way back to our hotel, our tour guide asked if anyone would be interested in receiving an in-suite foot massage back at the hotel. um ... yes please! after a tiring day, and an epic great wall climb, my feet, legs, entire body, were aching. only 150yuan (about $22CDN) for an entire hour. needless to say, i received the best. massage. i. have. ever. had. it started with a hot foot soak in tea while my back, neck, and head were rubbed. and pulled. and twisted. while i was sitting upright, she pushed her own feet into my back while pulling my arms backwards towards her. potentially very weird ... but it just felt so good! she then did my feet, ankles, and calves. at the end, she got right on top of me and stretched and massaged by thighs. thank god our tour guide had suggested getting a female masseuse, or it may have been awkward city.

DAY THREE 天三

the morning began with a tour of the forbidden city and tian'anmen square. the forbidden city is the winter sister to the summer palace, and is the largest palace in asia. it was beautiful but very very crowded, as not only is it china and has over 1 billion residents, but saturday was also the country's mid-autumn festival. holybusyandextremelyovercrowdedicansmellthepeoplearoundmebecausetheyare
waytooclosetome. mark enjoyed himself because he got stopped by more than five different chinese tourists asking to take a photo with him because he's "very handsome". ego boosts all around. tian'anmen square (where the 60th anniversary party had been held two days prior) was an absolute zoo. i don't think i've ever been in a throng of people that large, for such a long period of time!
after lunch, we went to the pearl market and the silk market, and had the opportunity to buy both, if so desired. then to yashow market for hours in haggling-for-knockoffs heaven. five floors of stalls/booths (vaguely resembling dongdaemun markets in seoul) selling "designer" shoes, bags, clothes, coats, watches, electronics, souvenirs, you name it. i don't want to talk about my specific purchases to protect their knockoff identity (mark already told me i'm ridiculous, don't worry), but you can't tell its not real, and therefore: deals! success! what a rush ... i wish we hadn't spent all our money + had more room in our suitcases so we could have gone back for more. we got so good at haggling for low prices, i was incredibly impressed with our skills.

DAY FOUR 天四

our flight left in the early afternoon, so we spent the morning exploring the 798 art district; most of the galleries weren't open yet, but we took advantage of the photo opportunities the outdoor sculptures and multiple graffiti walls provided. the area made me simultaneously nostalgic for MIT and queen street west. it was an amazing way to end our trip. and a cheap way too, since our pockets had been successfully emptied at the market the day before.

i give our glimpse of china a 9 (super) out of 10 (perfect).

beijing or bust

2009-09-30T12:31:00.005+09:00

we're off to china tomorrow. very exciting stuff. i'm happy to have a nice long weekend (5 days) and get to see a little sliver of china. even though the country has lots to offer we will just be visiting beijing as we don't have much time off school to travel.
when we decided to come to korea i was greatly intrigued by the possibility that we could travel all over asia. so many countries to go to, so many things to see.
our first foray outside of korea should be a good one.
after acquiring our chinese visa, multiple entry visa and converting some won to yuan we're ready to go.
we'll be visiting all the famous sights like the great wall, forbidden city, tiananmen square and so on.
and can't forget some shopping (i think alex might be most excited about this part).
coincidentally its the 60th anniversary of the peoples republic of china on thursday so who knows what celebrations we might run into while there.

on a separate note, one of my favorite students told me that he is leaving our academy and that today will be his last day.
his name is mike but he would tell me he wanted to change his name daily and would always choose the name of a soccer player. one day he was torres, one day he was beckham, one day he was robbie (keane), next day he was raul, after that he was ronaldo. you get the point.
i've had many students that i don't really care for leave over the past 5 and a half months but this was the first student i really like that is quitting.
he told me that his father wants him to study alone, so after school he will have to study english, math and science on his own at home. poor kid.
turns out, not surprisingly, that his father could no longer afford the academy fees.
i'm not sure what they charge, but i can imagine it's not cheap.

so as i go off to china, i'm sad to see one of my lil' buddies go, but happy to start my traveling adventures outside of korea.

-mark

just call us thrill seekers

2009-09-28T11:49:00.008+09:00

yesterday, we spent the day at lotte world, one of the largest indoor amusement parks in the world.

lotte world has a massive disney-like castle, as well as an indoor ice rink and a glittering antique carousel. that being said, it didn't have nearly as much sprawl or ride options as what we've got back in the homeland, but it was also only a quarter of the admission price, so no~~t too many~~ complaints. needless to say, as a huge roller coaster lover, i was pretty excited.

as most of the stomach-dropping not-for-children-rides are located on the park's outdoor "magic island" we were worried about the weather forecast (as it was calling for rain). however, the looming clouds must have kept the crowds at bay - it didn't rain and we spent almost zero time in lineups.

while there are a handful of decent thrill rides, lotte world's size really limits its number of roller coasters (there were two, and one was a little head-bashing and concussion-inducing: the french revolution, quite hilariously named though). we enjoyed the gyro drop and gyro swing - very similar to wonderland's drop tower* and psychlone, respectively. however, the lack of good coasters meant we had a lot of time to go on the bumper cars and teacups, also known as "the drunken buckets" - how fitting! more specifically, it meant that our day ended at 4:30pm because we'd conquered the entire park.

lotte world is located just south of the han river in seoul, at jamsil station (exit 2). i'll give our visit a solid 4 gyro drops out of 5. and i will consider it just a warm-up to south korea's (bigger and better) everland.

get me off this drunken bucket!

* when did drop zone become drop tower ?!?

good bye (and good luck!) (and thank you!) sandy teacher

2009-09-21T00:05:00.013+09:00

we've had a busy week, and a too-short/one-day weekend. due to the ~~irrational~~ growing fear of h1n1 in south korea, and more specifically, at our little hagwon, school was canceled last friday. and while we had no complaints about an impromptu 3-day weekend at the end of last week, the "make-up" day for cancellation meant classes on saturday, and a 6-day week. and only one lonely sunday free of work commitments. boo-urns.

to bring you up to speed: the flu pandemic is no greater here than at home, south koreans are just huge hypochondriacs. you'd think they'd replace the communal towels in the bathrooms at school before shutting it down for an entire day due to germ-spreading fear (nevermind the nonsense of canceling friday's classes so that everyone's worries will have dissolved by ... monday?) but, anyway.

saturday's work day was also mark's partner teacher sandy's last day at school. she is moving on to bigger and better things (and more specifically, starting her work-free adventures by traveling to singapore and hong kong, awesome!). needless to say, we were pretty sad to say goodbye. we bought her a cake and a card that said "thank you" when it should have said "good luck" ... but thus is the hazard of my poor hangul reading skills. that being said, i suppose thank you still served a purpose! we received good bye presents too - in the form of matching couple mugs! how sweet. my vote is to emblazon this glorious pic on matching t-shirts. i'll let you know if this fantastic idea to jump on the korean-style-bandwagon ever comes to fruition.

other than that, we've more or less been laying low since our island holiday two weeks ago. there are only 10 days left in the countdown to our trip to beijing, china over chuseok (korean thanksgiving) (!!!!!!!!!!!), so down-time and curtailing of frivolous spending is in order. frugal pastime #1 - continuing with my self-run book club. i'm now onto jonathan safran foer's everything is illuminated, which with the opening line: "my legal name is alexander ... but all of my many friends dub me alex, because that is a more flaccid-to-utter version of my legal name." (1) has me swooning already.

mark's jeju travel log

2009-09-13T15:45:00.008+09:00

day 1

trip starts out smooth as we get to the airport early
but realize we don't know what airline we're flying
easily remedied
the flight goes smoothly until a couple minutes before landing when i start getting a shooting pain around my eye
then alex tells me i have a protruding black lump above my eye
i thought my head was going to explode but it didn't (it's not a tumor!) (arnold schwarzenegger) (kindergarten cop)
then off to the hotel where we are only moderately out of place being the only foreigners and guests under 50
we take a lil' walk around jeju city and visit the dragon's head rock while i nurse my lingering nearly exploded human head
later that eve we head out for dinner and get a jeju specialty, black pig
some pieces still have remnants of black hairs
still extra tasty though
visited nearby seaside fair, that had one ride in operation
viking ship -yeah!
ride promptly shuts down as we approach
"finisheed" - captain of the viking ship/korean carnie
seaside fair - FAIL.

day 2

we get our rental car at 9am
it's a sweet hyundai click, but the GPS in the car is only in korean
which is essentially useless, but still fun to watch and play with despite alex's contempt for me GPS'ing and driving at the same time
the GPS makes super annoying noises when you speed near police cameras, helpful and irritating at the same time
i realize how much i miss being able to just cruise places
we hit the manjanggul lava tubes first, longest lava tubes in the world
they are dark and drippy, therefore not very photogenic, but pretty cool
korean women even wear high heels in caves
next stop is sunrise peak where we take a lil' hike up to the top for a sweet view of jeju's east coast
then off to the waterfall portion of the day where we see the only waterfall in asia that falls directly into the sea, also where a homeless women makes her home and dries her undergarments
ear popping drive up korea's highest mountain, not all the way up
actually more like part way up and around the side
mysterious road is next and turns out to be not so mysterious at all
then to alex's highlight of the trip, loveland, a must visit if ever traveling to jeju
last stop on the driving tour was a beach on the west coast to hang out and watch the sunset
can't forget our lonely planet recommended mexican dinner and of course drinks, delish

day 3

have to fill up the gas tank before returning the car which turns out to be easier than i imagined it would be
minus a lil' run in with the cops for trying to make an illegal turn
i plead foreigner
then a last walk around our hotel's hood before heading back to the airport
half of the time wandering aimlessly looking for a bank machine
sad to head off to the airport and back home but korean children need to learn and without us, not much of that goes on
a confused korean air lady tries to tell us our visas aren't valid and we can't travel to seoul
luckily she was just stupid
i was worried about my exploding head syndrome but nothing happened on the way home
cured

for less information and more pics look at alex's post below

-mark

overdue review: 제주도

2009-09-09T22:20:00.025+09:00

i wrote half of this a week ago. and then i got lazy and procrastinate-y (uhh ... who, me?) and saved it as a draft with good intentions of finishing and publishing it promptly. then, 7 days accidentally passed. oops. so read this as if it was written last monday, ok? ok.

at the top of seongsan ilchulbong (sunrise peak)

so, we're back from our whirlwind jeju vacation, and i'm missing island life already. the weather was perfect, our seaside hotel was luxurious, and our driving adventure itinerized (yes, i just invented that word) itself perfectly. as far as comparisons to hawaii go, i'm at a loss: i've never been to hawaii. but i can tell you that jeju has palm trees, a dormant volcano, black sand beaches, delicious tangerines, tree-canopied winding mountain roads, and many many coordinated-outfits-honeymooning couples.

i've put aside the best pics for your perusal. my trip advisor tidbit: any journey to asia is worthy of a stop in jeju-do. it's definitely an orange-flavoured dol harubang-filled gem.

seaside boardwalk outside our hotel

our hyundai click

seongsan ilchulbong from a distance

aerial view of seongsan ilchulbong bowl (internet pic)

cheonjiyeon falls

dragon's head rock ... face off

jeju tangerines (and a sweaty post-hike face)

tree canopy on mt. halla, the tallest mountain/volcano in south korea

at jeongbang falls, only falls in asia that fall directly into the sea

i've kept the potentially NSFW pictures from the blog, as we visited loveland, jeju's outdoor sex theme park (awesome!) so there's more to see! (if you're not a work, that is). you can see them here.

off to the land of dol hareubangs

2009-09-04T23:32:00.005+09:00

it's another pre-vacation eve for us, and we're too excited to sleep. we're heading out early morning to catch a shuttle to the airport for our flight jeju-do (also known as "korea's hawaii," our post report will confirm) for three days of exploring and relaxation. and monday off work!

mark also successfully got his international driver's license this week. as a recommendation from our friend derek, who recently visited the island, renting a car seriously helped the getting-around factor. it was also fairly easy to obtain, too. mark had to show the required ID and his ontario driver's license and pass a sight test (the colour portion proved a little tricky - who needs to know the difference between red and yellow and green anyway?) and tada! officially internationally eligible to drive. good luck to him, i am too scared shitless to drive in the madness that is asian traffic and traffic rules. or rather, significant lack of traffic rules. i will happily be a passenger/backseat driver/navigator instead.

on another note, i finally got around to putting my prescription in my new cheap and stylish frames. and now i can fully fit in with koreans, as 90% of them rock the oversized plastic frames. i made that statistic up, but i'm sure you follow ...

new glasses for ₩40,000 = $35CDN! hello, i am going to be bringing a suitcase full of reasonably-priced prescription glasses home with me to canada.

happy long weekend!

so long sweet summer

2009-08-31T22:38:00.010+09:00

so, tomorrow is the first day of september, and it can't help but stick in my mind as the end of summer and the arrival of the (at home) back to school season. here, it means ... not a whole lot, since school's been going strong through the hottest months of the year. it does mean our 5-month korea-versary is around the corner though, and again i marvel at how quickly the sand is passing through the hour glass. i live in this weird paradox of feeling like i just got here and feeling like i've been here forever. it's hard to wrap my mind around.

one thing i miss about being "new" to korea is the awe at all the ~~weird~~ different things this country considers normal. how quickly we've become accustomed to (and, mind you, have respectfully embraced, criticized, laughed at, and abhorred) things like everyday korean style, the ubiquitous sale and consumption of alcohol, drunk-in-public businessmen that accompany the ubiquitous sale and consumption of alcohol, lack of safety for pedestrians, lack of safety rules in general, cheap ice cream treats, cheap cigarettes, caramel popcorn at the movies, being objects of attention because we're caucasian ... etcetera, etcetera ... i really could go on and on (and on).

having mark's sister ali here was sort of a re-awakening to all these wonderful korean things. she left us copies of her pictures, and it was refreshing to see our stompin' grounds through someone else's new-to-asia eyes.

who needs a real-life employee when you can just have a volunteer mannequin direct traffic away from the construction zone? click to enlarge

mondo bugs are everywhere.

pizza school - pepperoni with cheesy crust in my personal fave, but you can get corn or pasta or potatoes on your pizza too ...

mark posing as a ... white guy ... for a random's photo

appealing (and again, life-like!) statues enticing you into a restaurant in myeongdong.

parent-less child going for a stroll, every day sighting.

frosted flakes!

snazzy umbrella bag machines, saves drips on indoor floors. excess waste not considered ...

why use the road for your motorbike, when this sidewalk is just that much handier? it's also common to see cars on pedestrian routes as well ...

so happy september to you all! i'm excited for less humidity and teaching my students a three-syllable month name.

one fish two fish red fish doctor fish

2009-08-20T23:26:00.013+09:00

i'm a big fan of pampering - give me massages or back scratches any day, any time. at home (when in the money) i was a regular client at the cheap pedicure place by my house. now that we're in korea, finding such luxuries isn't as easy. but one thing we knew we had to seek out while being residents of sk was dr. fish.

unfortunately, i can't recall what i'd heard of dr. fish before making the trip to the other side of the planet. apparently oprah did some coverage of its benefits, but that could be wrong. i've also heard mixed things about the hygienic side of such a procedure, but i vetoed doing any research - and potentially finding gross results - before going through with it.

dr. fish is a sort of pedicure/relaxing foot bath that involves hundreds of little fish eating the dead skin from your feet. shanna and dave had done it multiple times while here, so we were reassured by their review. and to be honest, i was just really curious about what it would feel like to have little creatures nibbling at my toes. and heels. and ankles. ok, and calves.

s & d had recommended a place in gangnam, a swanky area of seoul, south of the han river. i was expecting a salon of sorts, something with white walls and uniformed dr. fish practitioners. instead, we were greeted by a posh second-floor coffee shop. the rule was: you buy an overpriced beverage of your choice and only pay ₩2000 (less than $2CDN) for the fish. then lounge, enjoy your free toast and jam, and wait for your turn. the fish were in small trough-like tanks by the windows, and the area around them was raised to allow for comfortable floor seating while your feet dangle.

after waiting about 30 mins, it was our turn. we were required to hose down our feet, and then the four of us shared one communal fish pool (or trough, for lack of a better word). at first, it was seeming near-impossible to even get a foot in with the fish - it was soo ticklish. the sensation is hard to describe. sort of like pins and needles meets dr ho's electric massaging pads (you know, if you've ever tried those ...). nevermind the huge mind-over-matter factor. part of me didn't like the idea of little creatures on my feet. i kept having to erase from my mind what was actually going on. it was also nice that the pool had jets that kept you from actually seeing the fish on your feet.

one trough of fish for four, coming right up ...

bird's eye view of what we were in for.

zoom in on them hungry little fishies

they weirdly remind me of baby birds, with their hungry open mouths. you can see the ones that have already attached themselves to madeline's foot.

at first i was a bit repulsed, but i was won over by the experience in the end. seventeen minutes later, i suppose my feet did feel a little post-pedicure-y. though, it was hard to tell after having to wear flip flops in the post-rain streets of seoul and on the subway home ...

my dr. fish experience gets 4.5 dead-skin-eating swimmers out of 5. overpriced beverage included.

the DMZed (it's better canadianized, non?)

2009-08-18T00:25:00.025+09:00

alright, so i'm overdue in the re-cap of events-a-happening-lately, so this report's a week+ late, but bear with me. last weekend, we were still busy showing mark's sister, ali, the best spots in and around seoul, and despite her having left to return to canada last wednesday, i've somehow been too preoccupied to update ...

so here we go ...

last saturday, we went on a tour of the dmz, which was simultaneously awesome and incredibly intimidating. although we'd been to an north korean observatory before, the tour of the joint security area has stricter rules for visitors, as it's the only part of the dmz where sk and nk meet directly. most tourists to the spot are foreigners, as we're lucky enough to only have to pay for the experience, and not have to go through the lengthy and difficult process south korean visitors would have to. that being said, access is completely restricted for any citizens of afghanistan, cuba, iran, iraq, lybia, pakistan, sudan, syria, and of course, any north koreans. how interesting.

so, we'd been briefed on more or less what to expect, including strict guidelines on dress code (of which none of the following were permitted):

3. Dress code
-Dress code violators will not be permitted tour to the JSA.
1) A hole jeans or faded jeans (Basic jeans are o.k)
2) Top and sleeveless
3) Mini skirts, sports wear, short pants and slippers
4) Military style look
5) Any form fitting clothing of any type including tight knit tops or pants.
6) leather clothes

taken right from the panmunjom tour's website ...

well, after we'd cleared up that none of us would be wearing our a-hole jeans or leather chaps, we were set to go. we met our tour group and boarded the bus in downtown seoul, and set off for the 1+ drive to the border. our tour guide, mr. kim, informed us that there would be no pointing or gesturing at the guards once in the military area. we were only allowed to take pictures in and of designated areas. once we got to our destination at camp bonifas, our passports were checked, along with our shoes (no flip flops or sandals permitted), and we had to leave all possessions on the bus. and yes, if you click on that link, you'll also see that camp bonifas is home to the most dangerous golf course in the world, which we also got to see! bonus! the only thing that was allowed to be in our hands when departing the bus were our cameras (all cash in pockets, hats on heads) - this was to make sure we'd be more or less hands-free if we needed to make a run for it (in the back-to-the-bus way, not in an over-the-border-defecting way). we were warned that if we pointed or gestured in any shape or form, it was out of our tour guide's hands (pun intended?) and we'd be shot. mr. kim was a pretty light hearted and funny guy, but he made it clear that although we all laughed, he wasn't joking - and he would not be held accountable if we got gunned down by the military. we had to sign visitor's declarations before entering, and one section specifically stated:

d. visitors will not point, make gestures, or expressions which could be used by the north korean side as propaganda material against the united nations command

oh, and also:

1. the visit to the joint security area at panmunjom will entail entry into a hostile area and possibility of injury or death as a direct result of enemy action.

eeeeeeeep.

mr. kim also told us some pretty horrific stories about groups in the past where tourists had been reckless with the rules and "accidents" had happened. that being said, he also kept referring to something called the "ex mother instance," and it wasn't until the with-pictures slideshow was presented that i realized my terrible interpretation of his accent was really the axe murder incident. whoops. don't worry, that wasn't tourist-related, just north koreans soldiers attacking the american miltary.

the soldiers all stand at attention, just feet from the border. they use the building as a shield, and are thus positioned at the corners as such. i know it's honorable and all, but this must be a pretty fucking boring job...
this is building t-3, and we were permitted entry to the building next door, t-2

north korean soldier creeping us through his binoculars

inside building t-2: this table is in the centre of the room, and the microphones on the desk indicate the border between north and south. in this room, we were allowed to wander freely and thus enter north korea, but we were warned not to get too close to the armed unmoving guards (of which there were two). oh, and yes, also, no pointing or gesturing.

being terrified of the wax-like soldier (ali even mentioned they'd put mme tussauds to shame...) - this was shortly after mr. kim warned us not to get too close to them as they're quite hostile (nevermind masters in martial arts, and armed). please note smile of fear on my face.

mark's brave and right up close to him. they wear sunglasses to prevent any distracting eye contact, or "eye communication."

the concrete slab that indicates the line between north and south; north on the right, south on the left.

needless to say, we made it through the tour in one piece. i even ran into an old friend from university in our group. small world, what! and i know we've recommended it before, but let me harass you again to check out vice's guide to north korea because if you can't make it there yourself (or even if you can), that documentary is awesome.

*picture at top: the direct meeting point of the south korean and north korean borders, picture taken from freedom house pagoda on the south side of the border. in the distance, main north korean building, panmungak.

po-'hang time' episode 3

2009-08-11T00:45:00.013+09:00

After hanging out in the middle of nowhere for over half an hour, we grabbed some bibimbap at a tiny Korean restaurant near the bus stop. All of the other people who had gotten off the bus with us had now disappeared and we were starting to get a little nervous. After lunch, and maybe an hour since arriving at the country bus depot, a cab driver dropped off two old ladies who seemed to be communicating to us that the bus we thought we were waiting for wasn't coming. The cab driver insisted that we go with him and he could take us to the mountain. We decided to take this random and potentially dodgy opportunity and it ended up being the smartest choice of the day. After he took us through some back country roads barely big enough for a car and along the coast to check out a nice beach we finally arrived at our planned destination.

Map of Pohang and all its attractions

Map of Bogyeonsa (said mountain) with all waterfalls listed (in Korean)

We began our hike alongside a stream and before we knew it started seeing nice little waterfalls. The more we walked the bigger the waterfalls got. After an hour and a half of hiking with a little stop to wade in the water near one of the falls we were thinking of turning back. I was still hoping for bigger falls so I made Alex and Ali continue on for a bit more. We eventually got to a big suspension bridge that led us to a big waterfall within a giant gorge. This made the whole trip worth it. All the bus issues had been forgotten. We passed the spot where a chain to keep people from getting to close to the falls once hung and got up close for an obligatory photo shoot.

After we hiked back down the mountain, we decided that our best bet would be to take a cab back to the hotel if we ever wanted to see civilization again.

The rest of our vacation went off with pretty much no hitches.
We decided to spend the following day relaxing at the beach, and passed a good quality 7 hours sunbathing without a cloud in the sky. Needless to say, Alex and I got burnt to a crisp (while Ali just became more bronzed). Nothing out of the ordinary, but we could barely walk or even move the next day. We were a regular pair of Korean-made lobsters.

All in all, the vacation was quite the success in my books.

The view of Pohang from an observation tower in a local park

- mark

po-'hang time' episode 2

2009-08-10T00:18:00.008+09:00

We get on the bus a couple minutes after it arrives and when we get to our seats we find a Korean woman and her children already comfortably seated. We try to communicate that she's got the wrong spots, but when she takes out her tickets we see they have the same seat numbers as ours. They've clearly been double-booked. This wouldn't be a huge problem, but with the next bus not for another 5 hours, I was moderately worried. We stepped off the bus while they tried to figure out how this happened (everyone speaking in Korean). After deciding it was just good ol' human error, they conclude that it would be easier to kick the foreign non-Korean-speaking passengers without the three small children off the bus (I suppose the decision was clear). The driver indicated for us to take our luggage and thus wait for the next bus (instructions/solution translated via random Korean passerby). Needless to say I wasn't very impressed. I stood with one foot on the stairs of the bus and repeatedly said "NO" in Korean as angrily as I could, as they continually motioned for us to get our luggage. After delaying the bus for ten minutes, the bus driver started getting pretty antsy, so they decided they might be able to squeeze us in. Ali and Alex got to sit in regular seats and I got to sit in the VIP section next to the driver in the jump seat over the stairs. Then, after we made some stops and found that we weren't picking up more passengers, I got to relocate and join the ladies for the remainder of the trip. Possible bus crisis averted!

We're on a Bus

Needless to say, we eventually arrived in Pohang safe and sound. We took a cab to our hotel, quickly changed into our bathing suits and hit the beach, which was steps from our accomodations.

Once on the beach, it was apparent that Koreans have interesting fashion choices in beach attire. Most of them were fully dressed, either under umbrellas or in tents set up on the beach. Now it's odd enough that they wear all their clothes on the beach but they also swim in all their clothes. We saw Koreans swimming in shorts, t-shirts, hoodies, dress shirts, jeans.

Tents, umbrellas and Koreans in full dress

We felt somewhat awkward in our bathing suits, but I was mostly just happy to be relaxing at the beach. We hung out and explored the beach a bit, then went for dinner and hit the sack early.

The next day we decided to do some exploring and visit one of the local mountains which had a bunch of nice waterfalls. We asked the man at front desk how to get there and he said a cab would be too expensive and recommended the bus, as it would be cheaper and pretty easy.
He even drove us to the nearest bus stop (nice!), told us it the bus ride would be "many minutes" and that we would know when we got there.

And, so our second Pohang bus adventure began.

This is my apprehensive pre bus trip face

We boarded the already-packed bus and got on our way. A couple of minutes into our trip we hit some serious traffic. After almost a hour and a half of crawling (and literally being passed by pedestrians) plus several near accidents and an old Korean woman falling headfirst into my chest, we arrived at a random bus stop in the middle of the countryside where the bus driver informed us to get off.

Thinking we'd arrived at our destination, we quickly exited and found ourselves ... at a bus depot in the middle of nowhere. Apparently, we were now supposed to get on another bus, which left in approximately one and a half hours, and left us kickin' it in the Korean countryside for (what we hoped was only) 90 minutes ...

to be continued in part 3

-mark

po-'hang time' episode 1

2009-08-08T23:32:00.006+09:00

Editor's note: this is "part one" in a three part series. It's that gripping.

When we found out a month or so back that we would have a nice little vacation at the start of August, we were pretty psyched. Not because we were on the brink of some teaching-induced meltdown (as Alex may have led you to believe ...), but more because we hadn't had the opportunity to do much traveling in Korea, minus our foray to spy on the North Koreans and our trip to Mudfest, of course.

We had many ideas of where we could go and how we would spend 5 days in a row with no teaching, but as we attempted to plan our trip it got more and more difficult. See, the time we had off coincided with the vacation of every other person in Korea, and booking accomodations was proving to be difficult in itself. First, we were thinking Busan, but after being rejected by multiple hotels that were full and triple the regular price we decided to get some help from one of our Korean co-teachers. Mina, one of the teachers at our school, became our official travel agent. She brought brochures of beaches all over Korea and we somewhat arbitrarily chose one of the pages based on the pictures (as the pamphlets were conviently in Korean) and decided to go there. We settled on Pohang, the largest beach town on the east coast, which also happened to be home to POSCO, the biggest steel manufacturer in Asia. I think it made Alex feel at home since she lives close enough to steel town back home. Either way, the prices were about five times cheaper and they had all we really wanted: a beach.

I did some more research and found some other good stuff to do in Pohang and we were rarin' to go. My sister would also be joining us as she had just arrived for a 2 week visit. Fresh off a trip to Mexico, I knew she would be eager to hit the sunny beaches of Pohang.
So we got Mina to book us some bus tickets, cuz it's easier than doing things ourselves, and we packed our bags for our next adventure.

She told us to call her if we ran into any problems in our cross-country journey, but we weren't too worried. Although, lately we've had some minor issues with taking buses places (like when our names were nowhere to be found on the bus list for the Jisan Valley Rock Festival ... but, with Mark and Bridget's expertise it was miraculously resolved: through kindness and free bus tickets). I had my fingers crossed for no such issues with our trip to Pohang, but things have a funny way of not working out smoothly when you really want them to ...

to be continued ...

- mark

dear bank card ...

2009-08-07T23:49:00.008+09:00

i know i'm overdue for a vacation re-cap/play-by-play of our wonderful holiday beach getaway, but my heart's not into story telling right now, so you'll have to wait. in the meantime, you can enjoy the picture of the toronto skyline on a korean store for ... who knows. any guesses?

oh, and also, i got trapped in a bank vestibule tonight for a minute that felt like a super-panicky long amount of time. and yes, i'll use the word "vestibule" as the whole scenario reminded me of the episode of friends where chandler gets stuck in an ATM with a victoria's secret model. except in my situation, there wasn't a model. or anyone else, for that matter.

i didn't know the bank machines (not the bank itself, but just the machines) closed at 10pm, and i naively ignored the announcement that was going off as i entered. i put my card into the (then functioning) machine only to have it immediately power off, and all the lights go out. i frantically tried to press cancel, with little luck. both exits also immediately locked and i was trapped in the dark with no cell phone and no korean language skills. traumatic!

luckily, my panic subsided and my logical thought process returned and i reached up to undo the manual lock at the top of one of the doors and miraculously escaped. unscathed, and only minus one bank card. of course, this was only after idiotically banging on the glass windows trying to capture the attention of foreign, unknowing passerbys. oh, and probably recording a really hilarious (in hindsight) CCTV security video of a near-hysterical white girl frantically running around and banging on easy-to-self-unlock doors.

jisan valley, you rock. oh, and so do you VACATION!

2009-07-30T23:33:00.015+09:00

jisan valley rock festival was last weekend. we spent an amazing hot and sunny sunday with a handful of korean and japanese bands, patti smith, jet, oasis, and, of course, our long-lost kiwi friends mark and bridget. the weather was gorgeous (finally !!!) and the beer was a-flowing. i made 7 what-i-thought-were-epic oasis videos and all you can hear is me singing. oh well.

mark's sister alicya has safely arrived for a two-week visit and we are really excited to play hosts. also, as of today, we're on a five-day holiday, and we've got tickets for an early morning bus to a beach on the east coast. i've never been more ready to lounge and work on my ~~tan~~ burn; my fingers are crossed for monsoon-free weather as i'm eager to put my 50+ sunscreen to use. we're also loaded up with all the vacation must haves from canada courtesy of ali: twizzlers, swedish berries, a stack of books and gossip magazines.

in the meantime, you can enjoy the select few rock festival pics, below. "see you" next week!

a day (or really long week) in the life of alex teacher

2009-07-25T22:29:00.021+09:00

we've just finished a 6-day week, and i'm feeling a little tired of being a teacher. or maybe just a little tired.

as a sidenote, typically, we work on a monday-friday schedule, and relish our weekends (everybody's workin' for the weekend, aren't they?). however, last week, there was a protest on wednesday and we got an unexpected mid-week day off. to back track a bit, the government in our province is trying to pass a law that prohibits classes past 10pm - which, in my opinion is a human rights/child labour law that should have been in places ages ago before students were ever required to be in school from 8am to 12am in this country ... but i digress. so the big guys want classes to end at 10, and our school is outraged (as are many other hagwons), because this causes their business to lose money, and so on. in response, they decided to cancel classes for the day to allow representatives to attend this public protest and to ... prove a point? i'm not really sure, my mind's kind of boggled at the irony of demanding more class hours by cancelling an entire day of school.

but anyway, what this all meant was that we had to work this saturday, more or less against our will. which also meant that we had a six-day week, followed by a one-day weekend. which leads us up to now: relieved, and worn out.

don't get me wrong, on a good day, i really enjoy teaching. the kids are cute and entertaining and i really can't complain about getting to play a lot of games throughout the day. sometimes the students can be funny, and i like joking around with them and making them sing songs they don't want to (the older ones especially). i love when a kid wears a shirt with a hood and i catch them unaware and put it on their head and tie the strings really tight and in a double knot before they know what's happening (potentially cruel, but ohso hilarious).

but then there are the not-so-good days, where every student is super-annoying, and they won't stop speaking korean instead of english, and you keep hearing them drop "alex teacher"s in the midst of what you can't understand, and they're up out of their chairs and yelling and screaming, and your co-teacher is knocking on the door to check on you to see if you're ok and haven't lost total control because she can hear your little hellions through the wall ...

ok, so my classes aren't always like this, but i admit to sometimes losing the perfect classroom structure. in my defense, sometimes it's this lack of structure that can make class so enjoyable. see below, for jimmy's interesting pastime of giving himself a beard with the board marker. he happily posed for pictures (in his short shorts, no less) before pausing to ask whether they'd be going on the internet. then he did a happy dance at his potential internet fame ...

mind you, he was inspired by troy:

my students are crazy. i'll leave you with a would-have-looked-better-as-a-panoramic picture of my grade 1 class, who in my biased opinion are the cutest ones.

mike, jack, april, and ben (nose-picker extraordinaire)

tony, annie, mike and jack again

andrew, jenny, simon (in motion), christine, and tony.

needless to say, this class keeps me on my toes for 45 minutes every alternating day. oh wait, maybe they all do.

i know complaining about the weather gets you nowhere, but ...

2009-07-19T19:34:00.012+09:00

the view from our apartment on saturday

the rainy season is ruining my life. i use the word "ruining" in the loosest fashion possible, obviously. rather, it's inconveniencing my life. disrupting plans. causing us to stay in our apartment all weekend after a canceled white water rafting trip and avoid getting washed away by the intimidating torrential rain. being outside is like having a shower with your clothes on, and our clothes-line laundry won't ever dry because it's so damp outside! using my over-sized umbrella only prevents my head from getting wet, so our short jaunt to school requires packing a change of clothes (and thankfully i found room in my luggage for my rubber boots, as they're being put to very good use).

apparently, the rainy season used to last for about two and a half weeks."from july 4th or 5th, to about july 21" my korean friend informed me last week. very precise. however, global warming/climate change/what have you has extended the time period, and now it's length is unpredicatable. unnnnnnngggggggggggghhh. (that's my groan of disgust).

this season makes me cranky. but at least simon and martina have made this thorough video so you can get the jist of what i'm talking about ...

send sunshine thoughts our way!

the word "mud" is used 18 times in this post

2009-07-15T11:39:00.015+09:00

ah, the epic mudfest.

we spent last weekend in the west coast to town of boryeong, for the annual and much-talked-about mud festival. this event had been on our to do list since before leaving for korea, as it's been attended by friends/former ex-pats in previous years and the hype alone made attendance mandatory. basically, it's a weekend in which revelers can enjoy daecheon beach and the mud that is trucked in from nearby mud flats, which boasts natural good-for-your-skin qualities and is full of minerals. though, i'm hesitant to even write that after seeing some of the activities and their somewhat cesspool-like qualities. scooping mud off the heavily-tread ground (filled with dirty feet and garbage) doesn't seem very purifying for the skin!

the weather didn't entirely hold out for us - it was overcast and rainy when we arrived on saturday, but we made the most of it. one of the benefits of an expectantly dirty weekend is that it's a rain or shine event.

we were lucky to be staying in one of the nicest hotels near the beach - it even had it's own pimped-out water park! we'd lucked out even further and mark managed to get us an "upgrade" on our shared, korean-style hotel room. originally, we were supposed to be in communal accommodations without beds (most koreans sleep on mats or cushions on the floor). but instead we were given a private room with a queen-sized bed, flat screen tv, and private balcony. asah! i was the happiest kid, and looking at the foreboding sky, i kind of wanted to just camp out in the down pillows+down-filled duvet and watch korean mtv!

however, i remembered our original adventurous purpose for being there, and we eagerly headed out to the beach. here we were met with mud slides, mud wrestling, a mud prison, giant inflatable pools of mud, and more. most prevalent: drunk mud-covered foreigners. seriously, it was like a wet t-shirt contest, meets orientation week, meets ... mud. we ran into mark's friend from high school, and she was anxiously trying to rescue a friend of hers who'd, in complete intoxication, turned one of the mud pools into a topless show. yikes! regardless, we grabbed some cans of cass from the nearby 7-eleven, and joined in on the fun. (and don't worry, by "fun" i mean mud-fun, not topless-show-fun.)

and it's kind of strange just how fun head-to-toe dirt can be. it was challenging to adapt to the prospect of intentionally getting dirty - i kept trying to dodge people when we rushed into the throng of muddy bodies. but once you get over that instinctive hump (and get some alcohol in your system) it was a ton of fun.

our weekend ended earlier than expected, as when we woke on sunday there was a hurricane going on outside our hotel window. seriously. looking at the torrential downpour and gale-force winds, we were daunted by the idea of having to check out at 11am with a bus departing at 4pm. ie, WTF are we supposed to do homeless in this mud-town for 5 hours??? keep in mind, the beach and mud events were deserted and there weren't nearly enough DVD bongs (warm, indoor movie rooms) in the town to accommodate 20,000 (estimate and exaggeration) hungover foreigners. i wondered what had happened to the elephants (as yes, boryeong goes all out and even has ELEPHANT RIDES for mud fest!) ... sweet luck was on our side again, as we randomly ran into one of our tour directors who informed us the bus was rescheduled for noon. i wasn't kidding about the hurricane! it was enough to make your umbrella not only blow inside out, but also blow out of your death grip, and bounce down the street. we didn't even have umbrellas! needless to say, i was very happy at the early departure news.

my mudfest review is a solid 3.5 dirt-slicked foreigners out of 5. but regardless, something any visitor to korea should experience for themselves.

Who's my homeboy?

2009-07-09T23:24:00.011+09:00

About a month ago when I was doing my weekly chore of taking out the garbage, I came upon a discarded framed painting of Jesus

Alex and I had been looking for more apartment decor and as Jesus looked up at me from the heap of garbage he was sitting on, I had to take it
It was pretty much a sign from the big guy upstairs
Once I got it back to the apartment I started having second thoughts
Not being religious and all, I sorta wondered what we would do with it, and if I really wanted Jesus staring at me all the time
Then I wondered why he was even in the garbage in the first place
What had he done to deserve this fate?
Had someone lost their faith and angrily put Jesus in the trash?
A conversion to Judaism?
Maybe the painting had some underlying bad-luck-monkey-paw-curse secret
I debated sneakily returning him to the garbage pile

But as well, I worried that with Koreans being (from what I understand) pretty good Christians, and with us already standing out being the only foreigners in our apartment complex, that they would think I hate Jesus too
I'm trying to give us foreigners a good rep
I decided this Jesus had more life in him and wasn't going to the dump that day
So we kept him, albeit facing away from us 'til we could figure out what to do with him

I wanted to spruce him up
Make him a little hipper
You know, Jesus for a new generation
But alas I'm not very art inclined
So he sat

Then we discovered our friend Dave is quite the artist
So we commissioned him for zero dollars and zero cents to make Jesus a bit more contemporary and not so somber
The long flowing hair and the beard and mustache is always in style in my books, but something about those eyes just wasn't sitting right with me
From what I hear Jesus was pretty hip and to look so sad all the time wasn't really fitting
Now some might say, "Mark, this is blasphemous and you're going to hell"
and to them I say, "at least it's not a picture of Muhammad"

In all reality, if Jesus is so forgiving, he won't mind being spruced up for the good of my apartment
And as Dave reminded me, heaven is very close to the sun, so it's probably pretty bright up there
ergo Jesus most likely wears sun glasses anyway
So here he is, feast your eyes on The King of Kings:

Our place is looking better already!

If anybody is offended, please leave a comment, we haven't gotten many lately

-mark

kicking ass and giving names

2009-07-08T11:10:00.007+09:00

yesterday, i got the long-awaited opportunity to name a new student. as you may know, korean students, like many asians with difficult-for-westerners-to-understand-names, do us the favour of adopting english names to make our lives significantly easier. they usually obtain these early in their school years (sometimes kindergarten, or grade one, or two) and can carry them on for potentially the rest of their "english" lives. nevertheless, i was excited about being given the honour of finding this nameless boy his new moniker.

the popularity of boring old-fashioned names at our hagwon is apparent. you'd never find so many under-12-year-olds with the names lucy, sally, harry, judy, tom, jim, jimmy, bill, etcetera at home. i'm not sure why they gravitate towards these names, but i refused to let it happen on my watch!

as my new student was a 6th grade boy, my strategy was to select ten names that met my approval and write them on the board and allow him to pick his favourite. i chose names that i liked, or potentially would consider for a child of my own (ahem, future child!), and male friends names. and of course, i threw in the name "mark" just in case. there was no "bill", "tom", or "harry" to choose. sadly, there was also no "superman", "batman", or "optimus prime" - maybe i'm too rudimentary, but i don't think i could subject a child to potentially bearing a superhero status for a possible lifetime.

in the end, he chose "paul," which i suppose could also be considered old-fashioned and boring. but i kinda like it. and, in the end, if he ends up being a hellion and ruining that name for me forever, it wasn't near the top of my baby name list anyway.

minor celebrities.

2009-07-06T10:31:00.010+09:00

in korea, junk mail reaches a new level with daily taped advertisement(s) on your door. sometimes they become more inventive with magnets or whole shopping bags of flyer-goodness on your doorknob. mostly, it's just instant recycling or decor for our refrigerator. it's lost on us, as the catchy slogans and super-saving deals are all in korean. regardless, without fail, there will always be at least one to be found pasted to our doorway ... our doorknob ... the wall next to our door ... you get the idea.

and we're we ever surprised to come home from seoul last evening to find this precious gem taped to our door:

well, what is it? why it's a (massive) flyer advertising our school, in which our lovely mugs are working as fodder to draw the masses - of our apartment complex and then some. as if being the only white people in the vicinity wasn't enough to grant celebrity status (ie, stares) already!
to be honest, it's a strange mix of pride and embarrassment to be so "famous" ... and absolute relief that they didn't decide to put us on the side of a bus.

our friendly neighbours to the north.

2009-06-29T23:19:00.016+09:00

somehow my updating has slowed down to a weekly thing. i suppose because our weekends are the most exciting part of our time here, and thus prove to have the most content to write home about! regardless, thanks for checking in and i’m going to try to be more consistent in getting updates on here.

we vetoed seoul this weekend and instead headed north to an area called yeoncheon, which lies right on the north korea/south korea border. which is oh-so-exciting these days, isn’t it? to be honest, as much media attention as the good ol’ NK is getting back home, it really barely registers as news around here. south koreans seem generally undisturbed about the north’s threats – they’ve been living with this “fear” for more than 50 years.

a korean friend of ours offered to be our gracious tour guide, and she drove us up to taepung observatory (which was an hour+ car ride from the last subway stop). in my naivety, i was expecting some sort of wilderness-platform-lookout with public access and a number of stairs to climb. obviously, i was mistaken. i quickly realized how wrong i was as our 4-door kia approached a barricaded military checkpoint. however, our happy korean friend effectively got us past the armed guards, which required confiscating our IDs and a somewhat-lengthy sign-in. as the area we were headed into was “top secret” (her words), the GPS in her car showed no directions on the screen. the car climbed slowly uphill until we reached our destination.

the view at the top was nothing short of astounding, complete with three rows of barbed-wire fence overlooking kilometres of uninhabited fields. there were also tourist-friendly coin-operated binoculars and telescopes to enhance your viewing experience. apparently, you can often see north koreans working in the farm fields on the other side, but we saw no life to the north. the military on guard at the look out were understandably very serious about their jobs (and made me really nervous!): no pictures allowed, and they criticized my shorts for being too short. i'm not sure why the concern about the latter was really necessary, it was more than 35 degrees outside! nevertheless, mark took some prohibited photos … just so you at home can get the secret gist. or not get it, since the pictures are literally of landscape.

we’re still intending to go on an official DMZ tour, complete with up-close-and-personal encounters with NK military and tunnel tours. there will be more north/south commentary in the future!

the rainy season is upon us

2009-06-21T23:46:00.005+09:00

and as much as i hate to say it, it put a disappointing damper on our weekend plans. pun intended?

originally, we were scheduled to head to ganghwa island for a mini-vaca: a little escape from the gsa (greater seoul area, so you're familiar) for some r n' r. i imagined us re-doing muskoka in korea: quaint log cabin with cozy bunks, lounging on the beach, swimming, sunning, boozing, eating lots of yummy food. and yes, this fantasy is likely a far cry from what would have been, and our "cottage" would've likely turned out to be something typically korean, like a crowded homestay with mats on the floor for sleeping, or a musty canvas tent. but, whatever.

regardless, any kind of cottage dream never materialized, as the torrential downpour massively hastened any getaway enthusiasm. seriously, there was new meaning brought to the term, "when it rains, it pours" - when we woke bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 5:45am to begin our holiday trek, it was pouring. and the weather forecast called for... more pouring. needless to say, plans got nixed, and the only silver lining seemed to be returning to bed for some much needed naps.

the rainy season folks, will likely stick around until august. the air is sticky hot, and at least three typhoons are expected during the season. dear god.

cases of the mondays

2009-06-15T12:30:00.020+09:00

`
... don't really exist in korea. yeah, it's disappointing when the weekend is over, but i never have the back-to-the-grind dread that i experienced with many of my jobs in canada. maybe it's our 1:30pm start time, or the fact that the week zips by and before we know it it's friday again, but i never begrudge mondays anymore. it's kind of refreshing.

this weekend we continued with our touristy journey to seoul. a couple weeks ago, mark scoured our hand-me-down copy of "seoul's best 100" things to do and made a thorough list of all of the attractions and sites that are must sees. so far:

1. ~~namsan park + seoul tower~~

2. ~~coex aquarium~~

3. gyeongbukgong palace

the palace is an amazing historical fortress, and admission is only ₩3,000 (convenient for my champagne taste on a beer budget - thanks mom). the palace was established in 1395 as the residence for the founder of the joseon dynasty, and the grounds are just so extensive it's breathtaking. we wandered around for nearly 3 hours, enjoying the sunshine and taking far too many pictures. inside the palace premises is also the national folk museum, which had free admission. unfortunately, by this point i was hungry, kind of cranky, and just not in any kind of museum-appreciation-mood. needless to say, we took the hasty fast-forwarded tour of the museum.

in other news, we've taken up informal korean lessons with one of our korean co-teachers. i suppose it's more of a language exchange, as she's looking to better her english. we also spent almost an hour gossiping about travel with her, so i must stress the "informal" part of these lessons. only one session deep, we're still total newbies. however, mark's currently creaming me in the who-can-learn-a-foreign-language-faster competition, as he's already taught himself how to read hangul (mostly while i've been absorbed in my new bookworm habit, now onto the alchemist ...). the only problem is that even once you learn how to read korean, it's still, well, in korean. only one step closer to being literate in this country! as well, i've only gotten as far as memorizing the numbers 1-4 in one of the counting systems (as there's two). hangae, dugae, segae, negae ... then the numbers become more complicated and syllable-heavy after 5. we'll see how this goes.

사랑 당신은 당신을 놓친다
(ok i stuck that in a web translator...)

i'll leave you with some pics from our palace sightseeing:

also, happy birthday dad - RIP p.j.m.
xoxo

touristy and dorky things

2009-06-07T19:25:00.012+09:00

last sunday, mark and i were feeling super touristy and took the subway to the myeongdong area of seoul, to explore namsan park, home of the seoul tower. visitors are able to take a sweet uphill trek to the tower (we had no rough estimates of how long this feat would take. 3 hours? all day? koreans are hard core). despite my recently developed hiking prowess, it was sunny and sweltering; we opted for the cable car. apparently there's also a botanical garden and a small zoo, but we didn't get that far. we didn't even get up to the observation deck of the tower, as the views from the base of it were breathtaking enough (and we didn't want to pay the additional fee ...)

the tower has adopted a romantic tradition similar to one the great wall of china has, and that's to attach a small key lock to the perimeter fence of the tower to proclaim your undying devotion to the apple of your eye. the great wall's ritual apparently involves throwing the key to the lock over the edge, but the korean version has hefty warning signs prohibiting key tossing, and many of the locks were combination ones anyway.

needless to say koreans really really love each other.

there wasn't a space of chain link that didn't have a love lock on it. it was view-distracting! i wish i could have read more of the love scribbles, but obviously most were in korean. i did come across handful of english ones; one that a teacher seemed to have dedicated to her class (and to god. errr ... ) cute.

sweet love lock jumps.

upclose and very very personal.

this weekend we were scheduled to go to a baseball game on saturday, but after a near two hour trek were disappointed to find it sold out. and scalpers scarce. instead, we hit up the largest underground mall in asia, COEX mall. as much as i wanted to go on a shopping spree, having an entourage of males (in)conveniently discouraged that. instead, we hit up the large english section in the bookstore, and went to the arcade. strangely enough, i am loving video games in asia. who would've thought? ... no seriously, who?

on a completely separate, and somewhat dorky, note, i've (proudly) become total book worm as of late. to bring you up to speed: as much as i hate to admit it, my former love of reading has dissolved in recent years into a terrible habit of starting and not finishing books, with at least seven "on the go" - meaning, on my bedside table with bookmarks halfway through them. ugh. however, not all is lost! in the past month i have quickly absorbed kate grenville's the secret river, khaled hosseini's the kite runner (long overdue, i know), and cormac mccarthy's the road. my dreams were most influenced by the latter. all excellent though, and highly recommended! our bookstore venture brought home paulo coelho's the alchemist and jodi picoult's my sister's keeper. ok, so the last one's girly, but whatever.

ok, total dork post complete.
xoxo

Goodbye Conor Teacher

2009-06-03T12:18:00.031+09:00

So today, one of our fellow foreign teachers, Conor, is leaving Korea and heading back to Canada. As you might imagine, it's always a sad time when another teacher finishes their contract and leaves as we all become friends and get used to having these people around. Conor has been my main soju drinking buddy (other than Alex) when we go out for our weekly dinner with some of the other teachers; Conor and RJ took Alex and I out for our first dinner in Korea; our first noraebong experience in Korea was made extra comical by Conor, when he got really drunk and passed out and we had to carry him to Mark & Bridget's (teachers we replaced) couch to pass out on; and I'll miss listening to Conor and RJ shoot the shit about sports and other funny stuff from my far end of the teachers' room at school. One less guy to talk sports with is never a good prospect. Conor's experiences in Korea have been varied, many good ones of course but some of his low lights have been some of the weirdest and funniest stories I've heard from a foreigner since being in Korea. Some are definitely worthy of blog mention: for instance, being attacked by a machete-wielding Korean when answering the door at his apartment (long story) or my personal fave: being punched in the face twice by one of the owners of our school, Mr. Lee. Mr. Lee has since developed a healthy man-crush on Conor as seen in these pics (crotch touching and all)...

If you didn't know, Korean men are quite friendly, specifically with other men. You will frequently see Korean men walking down the street holding each others hands, but I assure you they are just exchanging long protein strains (a la Bill Clinton and Bob Dole in The Simpsons treehouse of horror VII, fwd to 16:30), or something like that, because homosexuality is kinda a faux pas around here.
Conor and angry Fred (looking pretty happy to spend some time with Conor).

The same night that Mr. Lee was cozying up to Conor, I was also accosted by one of the Korean middle school teachers, who insisted on wrapping his arms around me and continually licking his fingers and attempting to put them on my lips. Maybe this is some Korean custom that I am still unfamiliar with, but I'm leaning towards it just being another occurrence of overly-friendly drunken Korean men. I thankfully escaped without having to "kiss" his fingers, by sneakily distracting him with free shots of soju courtesy of the very hammed Mr. Lee.

That's him on the left showing his kissing fingers.

But as amusing as all this stuff is, this post is actually more about appreciating your time in Korea than awkward drunken man love.
Fred getting possessive.

Conor was counting down the days 'til his contract was up, which becomes a common practice among teachers nearing the end of their stay. We would talk about how excited he was and what he wanted to do when he got home, but as his final days crept up, he said that he was beginning to feel nostalgic and would be sad to finally leave his home of the last year. Maybe it was the stack of goodbye letters and drawings that he had received from all his students (many asking him to stop smoking in broken english or via illustration) or maybe it was just the booze talking, but either way, it got me thinking.

Many things haven't really gone as we expected since arriving in Korea, so at first I got the feeling, as I'm sure many teachers do, of what the hell am I doing here. But as the days turned to weeks and I became more comfortable and things started improving, I realized I am more than happy to be here. Even though I get sad sometimes when I think about home and the things that I'm missing out on (and the multitude of reasons that I love Canada), I have to always remember to appreciate this opportunity that many people will never get the chance to experience and take advantage of everyday in Korea.

Last night was Conor's goodbye party (which the bosses are claiming is also our welcome dinner, 2 months late), so we wished him well on his travels and thanked him for all the sweet gifts he gave us (big plant that Alex loves, little plant, speakers, Korean language books, mini ironing board etc)...
But most importantly he reminded me to cherish every day of this experience, because once it's time to go home, I'll miss Korea - its people, its culture, its food, and, of course, its booze.

-mark

prescription this.

2009-05-30T15:39:00.006+09:00

so, i was really sick this week. nothing serious, just head cold - for the second time since we've been here. i could feel it coming last weekend, and by wednesday i woke up with a raging headache+face pain+gross phlegmy cough. ugh.

we'd had a meeting at work and our boss voiced his concerns about the "foreign teachers having the viruses" and parents being worried about us westerners infecting their little ones with swine flu ( really? pretty sure it was all the germy nose-picking kidlets that infected me, but anyway ... ). so, as recommended, i decide to be proactive and get myself checked out, mostly to ease my concerned boss's conscience. what does one do when requiring medical attention (or more so medical relief) in korea, you ask? you head to the hospital.

skip that pesky walk-in clinic/doctor's appointment middleman and head right to the big guys. makes it sound much more serious than it is, really. don't get me wrong, i'm not complaining. in less than thirty minutes i'd been thoroughly examined, cleared for "pig inpluenza", and diagnosed with a cold and a mild case of sinusitis. now, all i had to do was take 6 pills three times a day for three days and all would be well again. no big deal. they even walked me to the pharmacy!

18 pills a day cures the common cold in korea. and i fully support the heavily medicated zombie alex teacher approach to health and wellness.

jong comes to the dong

2009-05-28T12:36:00.016+09:00

i wonder if kim jong il reads the blogs from south korea
you know, for intel purposes
i wonder if they creep the korean blog list
and if so, hes definitely reading this one
i wonder what he thinks of our time here so far
as crazy as he is, i'm sure he's pretty impressed by my crane game prowess and bobble head collection
sometimes i wonder if they even have the crane game in north korea
i would imagine not
maybe they have the crane game but the only prize u can win is oppression
or maybe they have kim jong il bobble heads
i think that would make for a good prize, better than oppression
he's pretty much a bobble head already
if he is reading this hes starting to get angry

i watched this great documentary on north korea
i didn't realize how kooky everything was there
i mean i figured it was weird but you gotta watch this documentary to see what i mean
anyway kimmy is all in the news lately
that's what inspired this blog
he's threatening to blow shit up, as per usual
but even though that's big news back at home, here its page 12 material most days
if it even hits the papers
i guess u get immune to the antics when you can pretty much see him from the balcony of your high rise
or maybe you just try and ignore him and they'll eventually just shut up
i think people here just get on with their lives because what else can you do
people here just continue to drive around in vans screaming in korean through a megaphone about local produce sales when i'm trying to sleep despite impending doooom!!
today though, my korean partner teacher told me kim got a 4 page spread in the local paper
all this is very reassuring since i find myself like half an hour from north korea
well half an hour if i had a rocket car that went directly north through the hills at 200mph
but to be honest, i feel pretty safe here in minlak-dong
i'm not really sure what jong would want from this dong
unless they are just interested in restaurants, convenience stores and hair salons(although i think mr. jong is due for a new hairstyle)
that's pretty much the gist of this town
i mean if u like fried chicken, which i do, u cant really go wrong in minlak-dong
most fried chicken joints per capita in korea (mark fun fact number 1)
i'm not really even sure who lives here as barely any of my students reside in this dong(neighborhood)
and pretty much none of the korean teachers live here
only the foreign teachers get the privilege to live in this dong, i'd say about 10 foreigners in this whole dong
i never thought i'd get so excited when i saw a random foreigner on the street
it borders on lame
anyway these facts makes me think that if the korean people don't even want to live here, don't want to hang out here and don't want to party here then what would kim jong il want with this place
i'm pretty sure he likes foreign movies, ipods and basketball according to wikipedia
these things don't exist in the minlak-dong
well basketball exists but when i'm schooling koreans on the court, you know something is up
what is up is that they suck at basketball
the koreans call me steve nash on the court
no joke
i think its more because im white, short and canadian but they also seem quite impressed by my "skillz"
which oddly enough never existed in canada
now uijeongbu he might like
despite the lack of night life, which i imagine he's craving and the overt military presence
they have everything kim could ever want there
you know, stores with gadgets, all the beige overall suits he could want, ipods, a basketball team, cell phones, a movie theater that usually has about 3 foreign movies at a time
so i think he'll leave us and the kind people of minlak-dong alone and therefore being in seoul or even in uijeongbu isn't all it's cracked up to be...
anyway if you are reading this kim, toss up a comment if you like it or even if you don't and want to smite me, i'm all earsi should probably just do like most koreans and ignore him, i shouldn't even write blog posts about him, but if i just wrote about my daily activities you probably would have stopped reading already(unless u stopped after the first line)
so mr jong, chill the hell out because you're making yourself look stupider than usual and you're making some people nervous, i imagine

-mark

oh, and as PROMISED

2009-05-24T22:47:00.001+09:00

it's 3 weeks-a month later than expected, but here's the tour of the luxury pad.

happy birthday to ma' boy

2009-05-24T19:14:00.028+09:00

i got him a cake that looks like a bear. and can be worn as a hat! seriously, i don't really know if anything can beat that. we made sure to ~~dig into~~ cut pieces from the back of the bear's head first, and haven't yet eaten his face. ha.

friday was a celebratory day filled with many many (too) many drinks. we started the evening with a dak galbi dinner with our co-workers, and inevitably, a couple bottles of soju. i know i've spoken of this beloved korean staple before, but soju really has grown on mark and me. it's easier to drink than vodka, but still packs that same powerful punch, and you can get a mickey-sized bottle for less than $1.50 CDN at any convenience store. asah! (oh, by the way, i'm slowly picking up korean; "asah!" translates to "great!" - and by "picking up korean" i really mean imitating my students and co-workers who imitate students).

after dinner, friday's party led us to downtown uijeongbu for an anticipated self-mandated pub crawl. we ran into some fellow english-speaking military who pointed us in the direction of a club with FREE tequila shots for the ladies - danger bay. we kept our wandering and after several failed attempts at finding a good spot we ended up back near our stomping grounds at a place called "beer ocean." i definitely had a couple of oceans too many in honour of the birthday boy ... i broke my non-puke streak and ended the night in my well-practiced state: professional thrower-upper. happy birthday mark, now please hold my hair back...

needless to say, saturday required some much needed downtime and couch-lounging recovery. on top of the hangovers, we've both been fighting colds, and mark woke up with a swollen ankle + limp after his birthday breakdancing. we watched several VBS documentaries and a haunting in connecticut (thumbs down) while eating pizza school and watermelon. lovely, indeed.

i'll let the pictures do the rest of the updating. here are some miscellaneously ordered snaps of the festivities. instead of sorting, you get cleverly-quipped captions!

mark at work with his birthday cake from his fave student, bill. bill spent two weeks of hard earned pocket money on said cake. two weeks! he told mark teacher that his "purse was now empty." how unbelieveably cute is that?? don't worry, we saved bill a piece. oh, and also, just to point out, all i got on my birthday was a class full of assholes.

i don't know if bill's cake can compete with my bear ... perhaps it's dog-bones-for-arms will give it a cakewreck vote. hehe - just kidding!

downtown uijeongbu looks remarkably deserted in this pic

nearing the end of the birthday evening celebrations - seemingly awesome tricks with mirrored elevator doors...

ah! look who's in the elevator: our blurry and somewhat scary-looking friends.

birthday dins, sit-on-the-floor style

in asia, the flipping of the bird means "fuck you" - it's a universal symbol.

there was a pre-bar trip to the firing range. it was unfortunately short-lived.

shots of tequila, free for the ladies (though i'm pretty sure conor paid for all of these)

dave's face on the side of the english friends bus! seriously, he's a celebrity for his school.

my masterpiece of a birthday card for mark - all 24 candles painstakingly cut out of origami paper. that's LOVE! it also reads "happy birthday" in korean, or more literally: birthday congratulations.

fun times with the bear cake - both look so happy!

speaking of looking happy (and i'm ohso brave to put this on the internet) but look who can pass out with a SMILE on her FACE!

gee gee gee gee baby baby baby

2009-05-19T10:22:00.001+09:00

so my adoration of this song puts me a season behind in the kpop top-of-the-charts, but i can't help having a small crush on this girls' generation sensation. and this vid even has english subtitles! bonus. when a song is a hit in korea it is played, and played, and played andplayedandplayed. i didn't think it'd be possible to grow sick of a tune when i don't listen to korean radio or watch korean music stations. youtube super junior's "sorry, sorry" to have a listen to this country's current most unbelieveably overplayed and ubiquitous track - it also doesn't help that my students will constantly hum this, break into it whenever they hear the word "sorry," or imitate the video's dance moves ...

meanwhile, we've been simultaneously busy ... and not busy. our trip to seoul this weekend turned into an unplanned overnighter (or rather, an early morning crawl home). mark's birthday is quickly approaching this friday, so this upcoming weekend will likely be something to write home about, both literally and figuratively!

miss you, loove you - and HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DIANA!!! xoxo

"wow, the sky looks soo weird!"

2009-05-17T17:17:00.001+09:00

"... that's because the sun's coming up."
our back-of-taxi conversation on last night's inebriated trip home from itaewon and hongdae, circa 5:45am

itaewon-wonn-wonnnnnn

2009-05-12T00:51:00.001+09:00

another weekend has come and gone in our new korea life, and i'm starting to feel the "fly by" of time that everyone told me would happen. tomorrow marks our one-month-since-arrival anniversary! holy crap.

this weekend was a lovely mix of all things a weekend should encompass: coworker dinners, copious amounts of alcohol (soju specifically), crane game wins (inevitable, really), sleep ins, lazy couch sitting, adventures to seoul, shopping, indulging in the north american-ness of itaewon, reunions with friends from home, mountain hikes, and the weekly sunday evening duck bbq dinner. it was whirlwind and lazy all at the same time. perfect.

mark and i rounded up shanna and dave around 4pm on saturday for the trip into seoul. we'd been told stories of the foreigner area we were about to experience, and as we headed up to street level from the subway station, i mentioned to dave that i felt like i was about to enter the circus. "nah," was his response, but i'd been warned about the seediness of itaewon's overflowing foreigner population. and while it wasn't as sketchy as i was anticipating, it was bizarre after having become so accustomed to the lack of non-asians to see so many ... races. every person who passed us was non-asian! i've never heard so much passerby english in, like, a month. heh.

we did some shopping and had some burgers at a joint called "happy days" - the hamburger buns were homemade and whole wheat* and ohso delicious. we hit the much talked about foreign book store, what the book? though i only perused, do to the seven-book library i brought with me (one of which i've started ...) by the time evening came, we made it to rocky mountain tavern** to meet up with mark's friend from TO, derek. RMT, as those in the know call it, is canadian owned and operated, and features live canadian tv feeds! i was more in awe of the tim hortons and telus commercials than the hockey game, but that's not really surprising. also, randomly, as we walk into the bar i hear someone shout my name and turn to see a familiar face from western (an ex boyfriend of a friend, ooh, who's going to be the first to guess who it was?? heh), small world, what! we also ran into a girl we met at the toronto korean consulate at the same bar; i suppose it really is where canadians congregate in seoul! we stayed a few hours and bar hopped to another placed called wolfhound, where we bumped into rj, a fellow foreign teacher from our school. the theme of our evening continued.

on sunday, mark and i made another trek up the hill next to our apartment. as my new personal trainer***, he also had me doing interval runs. of course, i was huffing and puffing and complaining like hell, but it was easier than last week and is becoming a necessity considering my new favourite dinner/lunch/snack is a ₩5,000 pizza from our local pizza school. next thing you know, i'm going to be fit! (or, hopefully at least of standard proportion and able to continue with my cheap and greasy indulgence).

* ironically, as i make commentary about being a minority, the abundance of white bread in korea is ... abundant. brown and whole grains are proving to be very hard to find!
** more than once i have referred to this bar as "rocky mountain high" and i get blank stares. i suppose this is what being from burlington does to you.
*** mark's new job that he might not know about yet ...

love you and miss you tons (and again, happy mother's day!!)
xoxoxo

생일축하합니다

2009-05-07T23:44:00.001+09:00

like i would let you forget: it's my birthday!!!!!!!

in korea, suddenly i've skipped a year and am 27 - yikes! ah well, i've always enjoyed the odd years better. at the stroke of midnight last night i was given roses, and i woke up to an apartment decorated with balloons and a table full of presents to open! what can i say, my boyfriend is the best.

after a relaxing morning of homemade breakfast and skype chats to home, we made it through our day of classes with intentions of heading to the outback for a birthday taste of home (koreans LOVE the outback). however, after our cab ride downtown, we unfortunately found the restaurant inexplicably closed. we tried several other options and wandering around, but our late hour wasn't bringing us much luck. my stomach was rumbling and my mood was souring - i even hesitated at the doors of burger king, feeling helpless and pity-party-ish and like icing my annoyed birthday cake with a whopper. what's a birthday girl to do?? i don't even eat burger king on a regular day, let alone for birthday dinner!

with mark's optimism, we decided instead to venture to a restaurant near home, which required another cab ride back (at least cabs are cheap! under $5CDN). however, ("just my luck" at this point!) our cabbie gets in a traffic argument with another taxi driver, whose stopped vehicle was blocking his way, and he suddenly starts hurling fast korean out the window at the other (seemingly idiotic) driver. next thing we know, he's put the car in park, is unbuckling his seatbelt and is out on the street to fight the guy! what the ... ! i, of course, am freaking out and wanting to leave the scene. luckily, a good samaritan broke them up, with a grin on his face to boot, and off we went.

unfortunately, our optimistic third try at making it out for dinner results in another closed restaurant. at this point, i'm ready to go home and sulk. however, mark has a different idea to cheer me up and heads into a convenience store for a bottle of soju. how alcohol can turn things around! we drink straight from the bottle on the street and hit up a crane game for - wait for it - FOUR WINS IN A ROW!

the crane game on booze-filled empty stomachs seemed to cure everything. we headed back to our apartment for a home-cooked meal instead.
needless to say, i'm lucky to have the greatest (and most patient!) boyfriend in the world. xoxoxo.

happy children's day ...

2009-05-06T01:36:00.000+09:00

... to us! we've spent a lovely day off recuperating (ok, so i was the only one recuperating) from our festive housewarming party last night and enjoying the balmy 25+ degrees - yay, shorts weather!

and while i was too busy enjoying the sunshine from the comforts of our couch (in my defense, the open verandah door was providing a refreshing breeze and i did make it outside by dinnertime!) to put together my promised apartment tour, i do have some recent photos for you to enjoy! so, enjoy.

dave and i kicking butt in street fighter at our new fave bbq duck restaurant. free video games for all!

wuhoo! i win!

mark's got a new addiction

...and a captive audience

the addiction continues

fruits of labour (so far, that is)

we went for a hike on sunday - up what we thought was a mountain. turns out it was only a "hill". dear god.

stairs helped the climb

bugs did NOT!

the view at the top! this is min-lak dong, our lovely uijeongbu 'hood.

how i felt about hiking that day ...

mark still had fun! (ok, i did too)

this is our building! (see, we're one step closer to giving you an apartment tour!) we spotted it from our hike and navigation was slightly restored.

and then we came across these guys! they live on the same farm that houses the multiple roosters who cock-a-doodle-do at all hours of the day and night. i like the ducks (swans? heh) better.

xoxo

happy happy MAY to you all (the best month of the year, really)

2009-05-02T02:31:00.000+09:00

i promise (i promise, i promise ... ) the apartment tours/photos are coming soon! once we get around to putting them together, of course.

that being said, life in our new pad is great. we are sincerely enjoying the three bedrooms + two verandas + two tv (!!!) set up we've got going on. we've scheduled a much needed house-warming party for next monday, and invited our co-teachers and new friends over for celebratory drinking. monday is perfect, you see, because we've got tuesday off for "children's day". this makes me laugh, only because i remember asking as a kid, in relation to mother's day and father's day - "mom, when's kid's day?" to which the quickly quipped response was always: "children's day is everyday." welp, in korea, it's may 5th, and it means a holiday for us. wuhoo!

our weekdays have fallen into a routine of sleeping in until 11am, making bacon and eggs, getting ready for the day, and going into school for 1:30pm. can't complain! next week, we'll start teaching our newly added class of grade nines, which should be interesting. 6 classes back-to-back for me, in one day! let's see how it goes ... teaching in general is always interesting. the classes i like versus the classes i dislike are slowly becoming definitive. the grade 1/2 class i have first thing on alternating days is quickly starting to stand out as a least favourite! in a class of 10, seven of the children are well-behaved, likeable, and seemingly adorable. three, on the other hand, are nightmares, and overturn the entire class! seriously, what to do with a 6-year-old who doesn't speak english and swipes all of his notebooks all over the floor and doesn't listen to ANYTHING is say? i spent about 3 minutes playing tug-o-war with him over his pencil case that he continues to empty all over the table, and not clean up, and bang around all of its contents, and disrupt everything .... then i figured that leveling with a 6-year-old wasn't really on my agenda, and i gave up. time to shame him! (also known as, making him stand in the corner with his hands in the air for however long i please. i figure it's a much more humanitarian version of hitting them with the stick. which, as a reminder, is permitted).

this weekend it's supposed to rain - AGAIN. we were adventurous and headed into seoul last weekend despite the torrential downpour. we wandered around myongdong's shopping district with shanna and dave, where i had to do my best to be frugal in the home decoration stores (all i want to do is decorate our apartment!). i managed to get away with a fancy toothbrush holder that suctions to the wall, and a pack of 30 cat postcards (seriously, less lame than they sound, despite what my sister had to say). the cats are all posing in well-known pics! mona lisa, girl with a pearl earring, marilyn monroe ... kitschy-cute. there was a massive veto on mark's behalf for their original post above the tv on our living room wall. fine fine, they've been relocated instead to above the kitchen table, where they now decor with cat-pride. yes! after venturing to myongdong, we took the subway to hongdae around dinner time, with intentions of experiencing the much-heard-about ice bar and other night life. needless to say, after a day of wandering in the rain and umbrella-jammed streets and being soaked in general, an ICE BAR probably wasn't the best idea. we paid 15,000 won to get in (one drink included) and ended up being the only people in there! pretty sure the koreans who worked there were laughing at us ... regardless, we got some good photo ops, and shanna and i complained enough to the boys to depart after the one drink. that day, we also relished some delish home food - burgers from craze burger, and mexican from dos tacos! one wouldn't think the koreans could do mexican (and believe me, the mexicans can't do japanese, so go figure) but, oh, so, delicious! i suppose you can never really complain about a 6000 won (under $6 CDN) meal anyway.

speaking of mexican, my grade 5 class today was asking how many canadians have died from "pig inpluenza" - i was all, wtf?? swine flu!? how entertaining that not only are they up-to-date with international news, but also that it translates as such. the engrish just makes it that much more humourous. apparently, we've lost 4 koreans to it. yikes! not that i'm one to joke about international epidemics, or anything ... heh.

we were hoping to explore more of seoul this weekend, but the rainy spring weather is keeping us close to home. not really enthusiastic about a day of rain-wandering again, thankyouverymuch. we've convinced dave and shanna that uijeongbu noraebongs are more inclement-weather-friendly, so we're going to cruise around the downtown area tomorrow night.

last night, we experienced the korean movie theatre, and went to see wolverine. yay to english movies with korean subtitles! we were probably more smitten (or mark was) with the infinite arcade within the movie theatre. suddenly, the ubiquitous "crane game" is mark's new obsession. we've already accumulated two (ahem, useless) toys, and i'm sure there are many more to come as he insists on having a go at every machine he sees (which are conveniently located on every.single.corner.) i, on the other hand, was taken with the option of having both sweet AND salty popcorn at the movies. hello, caramel corn! it's also convenient that koreans have no idea about jacked-up movie concession prices. a huge tub of popcorn for less than $4.50 CDN! seriously, unheard of in the western world.

alright, time for bed for me; apartment pics to come in the next 48-72 hours, promise.
love you, MISS you! xoxo

before apartment tours...

2009-04-25T01:22:00.000+09:00

... come tours of the love ~~shack~~ motel.

anyeong haseyo!

2009-04-24T23:51:00.000+09:00

so, we're finally starting to feel a little bit more settled around here. yesterday, mark and i got the keys to our long-awaited apartment! originally, we were supposed to be shacked up in the motel for 4 days, which somehow became 7 days, which eventually became 10 days ... all in all, too many days to be "living" in a room that's the equivalent size of a dorm room, and living out of rifled-through hockey bags and suitcases. our move was a little bittersweet, because while we were ECSTATIC to finally have a place to call our own, it also marked the departure of our new dear friends mark and bridget from new zealand. the kiwis had trained us at work, and also shown us the initial ropes of life in korea - taking us to seoul via subway, touring us around in their crazy set of wheels (an aggressively driven slim van with only one operating door), and how to pickpocket a bottle of soju out of a passing korean's back pocket (see the facebook photos for documentation of said events). bittersweet, indeed.

however, life goes on. mark and i have been keeping busy as teaching our own classes is well underway. somehow or other, i ended up with ten classes to teach (more than any other teacher!) but it's interesting and funny and tiring and challenging all wrapped up into one. i'm sure the challenging part will diminish, but the interesting part may not! i still have yet to figure out how to keep control of a class of 10 grade one and twos who barely speak english and are all yelling at me in korean. one was under the table, while another emptied his tin case of pencils all over the table and proceeded to bang them around incessantly. they seem somewhat oblivious to my repetitive: "ARE YOU LISTENING!?" (in which they're supposed to respond in unison: "we are listening!!"). give me a break, it's only week one!

in other news, we had to go to the hospital in uijeongbu today for further medical tests in the process of applying for our alien cards. these cards, which are so blatantly named for foreigners, will allow us to open bank accounts and get cell phones (yes!). the medical test included a blood test and urine test in which they screen for HIV and drugs; the additional tests today involved another blood test, another urine test, blood pressure check, height, weight, and chest measurements, hearing test, colour blindness test, eye test, xrays, and a dental check. all very interesting and thorough. maybe it's possible to be too short, too fat, or have too small of a chest girth to qualify for an alien card? hmmm. the hearing test was the probably my favourite; they made us sit in this little sound booth all alone with headphones on and you had to press a button every time you heard this tinny beep. all of these examinations were done in the "health promotion" area of the hospital - we didn't have to wait in any line ups (likely aided by the accompaniment of our korean-speaking boss) and the waiting room was equipped with a huge flat screen tv and a delicious free coffee machine. hands down, my favourite part of the experience was mark's attempt to get us cups of water and accidentally using the paper (yes, paper) urine cups for our beverages. oops.

i'll soon post long-awaited pics. one internet-connected step at a time. we're off to seoul tomorrow with our new friends shanna and dave, more specifically to check out the ice bar in hongdae - how fitting for canadians, har har.

love you, miss you.
xoxo

this internet is garbage ...

2009-04-18T17:56:00.000+09:00

i'm going to be hopeful and see if i can upload some pics on the wireless signal we're stealing in our "love motel" (also known as too-small-room to stay in for 10 days with luggage full of a year's worth of stuff + can be rented by the hour if necessary, 2 free channels of 24-hour korean porn included!) ... only one pic is working for me, so here's one of yours truly doing some trekking around. sweet track pants!

we've been busy exploring, drinking soju (cheap rice vodka-ish beverage), and eating korean bbq with some of our new friends. oh yes, and teaching. we spent two days observing, and we've already started doing some of the classes on our own. i've got ten classes myself, 5 a day on a 2-day rotating schedule. mark's got eight. (they must've realized beforehand that i'm smarter and more capable - ha, just kidding, baby!) the little ones are cute, and some of the older ones are a bit of a handful - who would've thought? some funny student names i've already come across: jojo (of jojo's psychic alliance, i'm told), k-fed, ganja... amazing. the kids' english is limited to what they learn in class, so they're not much of conversationalists. mostly a lot of "teacher! teacher! where you from? how old are you? blue eyes!?!?"

we made it into seoul today with the teacher-couple we're replacing. we were in awe of the multi-floored department stores and overwhelmed by all the shopping options. seriously, they have so much inventory in their stores it's a wonder how they sell it all - every colour of the rainbow. i've told myself to wait until payday before any frivilous spending begins (ie, shopping!) i will keep you updated on how that goes. completely outside of that rule, i bought a new hair straightener at homeplus (massive department+grocery+electronics store) with a suitable asian plug as i can't get my chi to work with our plug adaptor and my hair hasn't been the same since. but, for instance, they had 20+ different straighteners to choose from! options galore.

mark's napping right now as we prepare for an exciting evening of drinks and karaoke. seriously, i was initially disappointed that there didn't seem to be any noraebangs in our area - we're making a trek for korean singalongs! i'm very excited.

we've arrived!

2009-04-14T23:37:00.000+09:00

and this will have to be short, as we're relying on the stolen wireless as our source of hotel internet connection. but yes, we've arrived! and it was a long journey, that took us 20 hours + and jumped us 14 hours into the future, but it was relatively painless and hassle-free. by the time we got here we were exhausted, disoriented, cranky, and smelled like airplanes. we ended up sleeping for nearly 12 hours to compensate for the jetlag, and even had to go into school today already to do some class observations. it's been a busy first 24 hours! however, it was nice to meet the other foreign teachers, as it turns out there are very few foreigners in our town. (we also discovered that we're not even actually IN the town we thought, but rather outside of it.) mark and i went out to dinner with two of our new teacher friends, which is helpful considering we have no idea where anything is, or how to order food. it was great to get a substantial meal in our bellies after a day of eating crappy plane food, followed by mystery meat+pea sandwiches provided for us last night by our director. actually, come to think of it, i didn't even brave a sandwich - but i smelled one!

things are very different here, as expected (!), and i know it will all take some getting used to. we're going for medical examinations tomorrow, and we'll be able to move into our apartment by this time next week, as the teachers we're replacing (who are training us) will be going home to new zealand. all in all, things are going well, and there are english channels on the tv (can i complain when i can blog and simultaneously watch project runway?). i'm looking forward to exploring more, and hopefully heading into seoul by the weekend. it'll be nice to meet up with friends, and see some faces from home! once we get our own internet set up, and arrange our cellphones we'll be much more connected. it still feels surreal that we're here! missing you all at home already xoxo

visas are in!

2009-04-06T14:26:00.000+09:00

... as are fresh haircuts and dorky grins outside of the consulate.

less than a week to go - look out world!

this is what i'm doing instead of packing and organizing (go figure).

2009-03-28T07:29:00.000+09:00

where the wild things are, the movie! yes! the book that originated this film was a well-read part of my childhood. AND arcade fire providing musical accompaniment makes my heart fill with glee (as, they hold a special place in it).

ok, but here comes the mushy part. what also caught my attention were the taglines: "inside all of us is hope.. fear.. adventure." clichéd, yes. makes-me-seem-like-a-cheeseball-of-sentimentality, also yes. because this is how i feel! a strange mess of hopeful, fearful, and.. yearning to feel exhilarated. OHMYGOD, THE LITTLE COSTUMED BOY'S ADVENTURE TO DREAMLAND MYTHICAL CREATURE ISLAND IS SO SO SO PARALLEL TO MOVING TO KOREA TO TEACH ENGLISH FOR A YEAR!!!!!!!! (see, i can make fun of me, too.)

let's continue on that sentimentality train and quote a former co-worker of mine (though, if you knew him, you might not refer to him as wise or thought-provoking) who in a young grasshopper moment once advised: "sometimes you have to take a leap to make a change." it's interesting how a sentence can stick with you, and have such a resounding affect. it keeps running through my head over and over again - it's that unknown part that is so simultaneously scary and exciting. that's the part that's got my realism feeling a little surreal. and a little wild ... thing. what, too much?

two weeks to go - TWO weeks! that's the amount of time since i last updated this blog. wait, no, less than that! how's that for perspective? aside from all these heartfelt emotions and feelings of mine (seriously, i think this could've doubled as a dear diary entry, gush), things are well underway for our departure. all initial paperwork has been completed and mailed, and we're off to the consulate on monday morning to apply for our visas and book interviews. in the meantime, i've called on my most organized besties to come sort out this mess of an apartment of mine over the weekend and help me organize my life pre-departure.

i learned a new korean phrase this week. and by "learned a new korean phrase" i mean, my friend jenn phonetically sounded out one phrase and i memorized it. and have no idea how to read it in korean. however, mok-ju juseyo = more beer please.

a roller coaster of emotions

2009-03-10T18:45:00.000+09:00

today begins the month-long countdown to our departure (that is, providing all of our documentation is sent out in time in order to secure our working visas..) and the mix of emotions is mind-boggling. how quickly feeling overwhelmed and terrified can transform into bubbling excitement mixed with impatient energy to go, go, GO!

the decision to partake in this adventure came rather quickly for the two of us. teaching abroad was something i'd always considered post-university. i had even gotten to the initial planning stages shortly after retiring that rented cap n' gown. however, somehow, the adventure got lost and forgotten in the bustle of early alumni life: backpacking europe, securing a successful career with potential growth, and all the other yada yada yada that comes along with that well-trodden path to adulthood. i followed along on my "merry" way, until WHAM, one day reality hits you in the face and.. wait a second.. is this what i want to be doing? is this where i want to be? i'm supposed to be fulfilled and challenged, and yet something is making me restless. it's not time to settle down just yet. everything happens for a reason, and you're handed a big glass of perspective and told to follow your heart. and here's where i am.

my partner-in-crime has a story of his own, but somehow life landed us in similar adventure-seeking, nothing-doing-at-home situations. so here's where our foreign story begins.

i should responsibly relish the next thirty days+ and get myself organized. i've got an apartment to move out of, with an apartment's worth of furniture to find something to do with. i've got a beloved hatchback to find a year-long babysitter for. there are trips to the doctor, the dentist, the eye doctor. appointments at the consulate. canceling cell phone plans. organizing my entire life. visits and goodbyes to family and friends and all who will be missed.

and in the meantime, i keep following/creeping/watching every single instructional video of these two and wriggling in the mix of emotions.

life-180, here we come.